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THE PROBLEM OF THE TWO PROLOGUES TO 
CHAUCER'S LEGEND OF GOOD H 



BY 

JOHN C. FRENCH 



A DISSERTATION 

PRESENTED TO THE BOARD OF UNIVERSITY STUDIES OF THE JOHNS 

HOPKINS UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

1905 



BALTIMORE 

J. H. FURST COMPANY 

1905 



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Gift 

Author 



CONTENTS. 



A. THE PROBLEM IN GENERAL. 

I. Introduction ] 

II. The History of the Problem 3 

HL Chaucer's Motive for Revising the Prologue 11 

IV. The Ballad 22 

V. The Plan of Legend and the Structure of the Pro- 
logue 28 

B. THE TWO VERSIONS COMPARED IN DETAIL. 

I. Lines Transposed in the Revision 40 

II. Lines Peculiar to the G- Version 45 

III. Lines Peculiar to the F-Version 64 

IV. Lines Partly Identical in Both Versions 75 

V. Conclusion 100 



THE PROBLEM OF THE TWO PROLOGUES TO 
CHAUCER'S LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN. 



A. THE PROBLEM IN GENERAL. 
I. Introduction. 

The Prologue to Chaucer's Legend of Good Women has come 
down to us in two distinct versions. That these versions go back 
to distinct originals, and not to a common original greatly distorted 
in the course of transmission, is shown by large variations both in 
subject matter and form. That they are very closely related to 
each other is no less evident from the fact that a large number of 
lines, more than half of the shorter version, are exactly identical 
in both. Moreover, the lines which are peculiar to one version or 
to the other and those which are common to both, bear alike the 
unmistakable stamp of Chaucerian authorship. It may at once be 
taken for granted, therefore, — for the conclusion is irresistible, — 
that one of these versions is a revised or rewritten form of the 
other, and that the revision was made by the poet himself. 

We have in these two versions, so far as Chaucer texts are con- 
cerned, a unique possession. Chaucer has been edited and re-edi- 
ted and even translated into English by his critics, but in no other 
poem than the Legend has his own criticism of himself in any way 
come down to us. The importance of this possession is enhanced 
by the significant position which the Prologue occupies among his 
works. Although the date of the poem cannot be fixed with 
exactness, we are certain beyond conjecture that it stands near the 
middle of his career. In point of literary form it looks both 
backward and forward, for the dream, the glorification of spring, 
and the allegory, appear at their best and for the last time as lite- 
rary conventions in the Prologue^ and a collection of tales bound 
together in a common scheme and introduced by a prologue occurs 

1 



2 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

for the first time in the Legend of Good Women, the immediate 
precursor in art, and probably in time also, of the more ambitious 
Canterbury Tales. 

Considered apart from other works of Chaucer, the Prologue is 
still a significant poem. There is every reason to believe that 
when Chaucer planned the Legend, he meant to make it a monu- 
mental work. In that spirit the Prologue, necessarily the most 
vital and original part of the poem, was written. From Boccac- 
cio he borrowed possibly the plan of a prologue and tales, and 
nothing more ; from the ^ Flower and Leaf romancers, to whom 
he gracefully alludes, no more than a few of their conventions. 
He passed on to his imitators more of an impulse than he received 
from any of them. A notable result of this is the anonymous ^ 
poem, The Floioer and the Leaf, apparently inspired by Chaucer's 
poem and obviously an imitation of it. Clanvowe, in The Cuckoo 
and the Nightingale,^ owes much to the Prologue, and the anony- 
mous author of the Cowt of Love ^ betrays its influence in several 
lines. As an important testimony to that influence in modern 
times, may be instanced Tennyson's Dream of Fair Women, 

Since there is no external evidence to shoAV when or why the 
revision was made, or even which version is the original and which 
the revision, the possession of the two forms, however significant 
the poem in itself, has thus far little meaning to us. They are 
valuable only for what each adds to the common store of Chau- 
cerian verse. The problem of the closer relation of the two Pro- 
logues must be settled, if at all, by an appeal to internal evidence. 
In regard to this, as Professor Kittredge calls it,^ " very difficult 
question," scholars are hopelessly at variance. Since 1871, when 
the publication by the Chaucer Society of Ms. Cambridge Gg. 4, 
27 in the six-text edition made the shorter version easily accessi- 
ble in print, the question of the relation of the two versions has 
been argued from various points of view. Conjectures have been 

^ I do not regard as tenable Professor Skeat's attribution (Athenceum, March 
14, 1903) of this poem to Margaret Neville, sister of the Earl of Warwick. 

2 Oxford Chaucer, vii, 347 ; cf. 11. 56-80. 

^Cf. W. A. Neilson, "The Origins and Sources of the Court of Love," Studies 
and Notes in Philology and Literature, vi, 229 ; and J. T. T. Brown, ' ' The Author- 
ship of The Kingis Quair, a New Criticism." New York, Macmillan & Co. ; 1896. 

* Modern Philology , i, 1, n. 1, 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 3 

advanced as to the date and occasion of the revision, and from the 
same basis of fact different scholars have arrived at precisely oppo- 
site conclusions. In these investigations selections from both texts 
have been minutely compared ; but no one so far as I know has as 
yet undertaken a thorough line by line comparison of the whole of 
the two versions. 

Obviously, such a comparison must be the last resort in deter- 
mining the matter. If a theory based upon the poet's circum- 
stances, the chronology of his works, or his age does not bear the 
test of a critical examination of all the changes which appear in 
the texts, the theory is strongly discredited. If, on the other hand, 
a satisfactory motive for revising the poem is confirmed by the 
discovery of a great number of such improvements as we might 
expect a mature poet to make in a revision, the evidence is cumu- 
lative in favor of the better version as the later. 

It has been my purpose, accordingly, to weigh the various con- 
jectures why Chaucer revised the poem, and to reach a conclusion, 
based upon their more important variations, as to the relation of 
the two versions to each other. This conclusion I have endeavored 
to test fully by an exhaustive comparison of the two texts in detail. 
For the sake of convenience the longer and more widely distribu- 
ted form is designated throughout as F, — Ms. Fairfax 16 being 
the basis of the text, — and the other version, as G, after the Cam- 
bridge manuscript which contains it. 

II. The History of the Problem. 

The existence of the Cambridge version of the Prologue, which 
was discovered in 1864 in Ms. Gg. 4, 27 of the Cambridge Uni- 
versity Library by Mr. Henry Bradshaw, was first made generally 
known by Dr. Furnivall. In the summer of 1871 in a brief note 
in The Athenceum,^ he announced Mr. Bradshaw's discovery, and a 
few months later published in the same periodical ^ a discussion of 
the two forms. " That G. is the earlier version,'^ he says, " can 
hardly be doubted,'' and he continues to compare the two forms, 

1 June 17, p. 754. 2 October 21, p. 528. 



4 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

pointing out what he regards as improvements in the commonly 
accepted version. In Trial Forewords,^ published in the same 
year, he again touched upon the variations between the two ver- 
sions, taking it for granted that the priority of the newly found 
text was unquestioned. 

M. Bech, in his " Quellen und Plan der ^ Legende of Goode 
Women ' und ihr Yerhaeltnis zur ' Confessio Amantis/ '' ^ adverted 
incidentally to the problem of the two prologues as follows : ^^ Dass 
Gg. 4, 27 die friihere fassung ist, wie Furnivall im Athenccum '71, 
October s. 528 if. meint, ist auch meine ansicht. Fairfax MS. 16 
tragt den charakter einer endgiltigen fassung, jenes hingegen den 
einer vorlaufigen.'^ He argues further that the detailed enumera- 
tion of available books and stories in G (11. 267-312) has been 
wisely compressed into lines 556-558 of F, and that the idea of 
the Prologue has so developed in revision that Alcestis, who in 
G is praised for herself only, becomes in F a means to an end, 
namely, the celebration of the queen of England. 

In a dissertation entitled. Das Verhaeltnis der HandsGhriften von 
Chaueer^s Legend of Good Women, Siegfried Kunz arrived at a 
similar conclusion after a brief comparison of G and F. He found 
F more consistent, fuller, and livelier than G, and the variations 
between the two versions such as could only be accounted for by 
the theory that F is a revised form. An opinion that he had ear- 
lier held, namely, that the poem was first written independently 
and that later, upon the command of the queen, it was turned to 
account by Chaucer as a prologue, Kimz relinquished as untenable. 

Professor W. W. Skeat, in his edition of The Legend of Good 
Women,^ treated the question in further detail but also not exhaus- 
tively. He concluded from a general comps^rison of the texts that 
G, which he therefore terms A, is undoubtedly the earlier, adding : 
^^ I have no doubt that a close and elaborate investigation would 
establish the order incontrovertibly ; but it is needless to under- 
take it here ; for we should at the close of it, only prove that 
which, for practical purposes, is already sufficiently clear.'' 

1 P. 104 f. 2 jinglitty V, 313-382. 

3 Clarendon Press, 1889. 



Chaiccer\s Legend of Good Women. 5 

When he came several years later to incorporate his earlier edi- 
tion of the Legend into the Oxford Chaucery^ Professor Skeat 
found no reason to change his opinion. He reiterated his former 
judgment, concluding,^ ^^ I am not aware that any one has ever 
doubted this result/' 

Doubt was presently expressed w^ith vigor, however, by ten 
Brink in a paper entitled, " Zur Chronologic von Chaucer's Schrif- 
ten," which was published in Engllsche Studien ^ after his untimely 
death. The second part of this paper was devoted to the prob- 
lem of the two Prologues, and to the date of the translation of Pope 
Innocent's tractate, De Contemptii Mundi. In it ten Brink, 
remarking that he had never seen any adequate ground for the 
commonly received opinion, undertook to prove by an entirely 
new course of reasoning that G is a revised form. He argued (1) 
that since allusions to the poet's old age which are found in G are 
consistently wanting in F, therefore G must have been written 
when Chaucer was an older man and is consequently the later ver- 
sion ; (2) that the list of authorities named by the god of Love in 
G (11. 267-312) contains books with which Chaucer does not seem 
to have been acquainted when he wrote the first version ; (3) that 
the ballad, which in G (11. 203-223) has the refrain Alceste is here, 
existed, previous to its use in the Prologue, as an independent 
poem, and that it appears in the form in which it was first written 
in F (11. 249-269) where the refrain is My lady cometh, F being 
therefore the earlier version ; (4) that the plan of the Legend as 
originally conceived appears more clearly in F than in G. Since 
this plan was never carried out the poem which does not present it 
fully may be assumed to be later. When all these arguments are 
admitted, it is a short step to a new date for the translation of Pope 
Innocent's work, which, inasmuch as it is mentioned in G and not 
in F, may be supposed to have been made between the first copy 
and the revision. 

The date of the G version, from its association with the 3Ian of 
Law^s headlink, ten Brink regards as hardly earlier than 1393, 

^Clarendon Press, 1895. ^Vol. in, p. xxi. 

3 Vol. XVII (1892), pp. 1-23. 



6 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

and the Wreched Engendring of llanJcinde^ on account of its religi- 
ous character, he associates with the period of Chaucer^s bereave- 
ment and financial distress, and dates 1387-1388. From the 
mention in the 3fan of Law's headlink^ of various heroines as if 
they had been celebrated in Chaucer^ s Seintes Legende of Oupyde^ 
though their stories are not found in the Legend as we have it, ten 
Brink concluded that the poet must have been planning, as he 
wrote the headlink, to complete the Legend of Good Women. 
Before writing any additional stories, he revised the Prologue, 
altering it to suit his changed relation to the court. When he had 
done this much, he tired of the project and gave it up, withhold- 
ing the new version from circulation. 

On the appearance of this article Dr. John Koch added to his 
Chronology of Chaucer's Writings, then (1892) in press for the 
Chaucer Society, an appendix in which he endeavored to refute ten 
Brink's arguments one by one. To the conclusion based on allu- 
sions to old age, he replied by discrediting the manuscript authority 
for one passage (G 31 5) and the seriousness of another (G 258-263), 
doubting the chronological significance of such changes in any case. 
The omission in F of the list of books he attributed to the inap- 
propriateness of some of them, and to the poet's desire to obey the 
injunction of the god of Love to be brief. He found in the incon- 
sistency of G, in that the poet pretends to be ignorant of the name 
of Alcestis when he has thrice heard it in the ballad, a convincing 
proof that F is a revision, and turned ten Brink's argument on the 
plan of the Legend directly about to make it prove the opposite. 
It seemed to him very strange that if Chaucer added the Wreched 
Engendring of Mankinde to the list of his works because it had 
been written since the first version, he did not also mention the 
tales of Griseldis and Constance, which all admit were probably 
written before 1393. 

Upon such considerations as these and others already advanced 
by Skeat, Dr. Koch saw the arguments of ten Brink crumble to 
pieces and was "astonished to find so much ingenuity applied to 
so futile an attempt." In a footnote (p. 81) to Koch's appendix, 

^ Canterbury Tales, B 60 ff. 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 7 

Furnivall tersely expressed his view of ten Brink's theory by the 
ejaculation, '' Impossible surely ! '^ 

In Germany, however, the theory of the priority of F was 
received with more favor. Dr. E. Koeppel, who had previously 
held to the commonly accepted view, promptly accepted it^ and 
declared that he regarded the question as settled for all time. This 
judgment he reiterated in a review of Koch's Chronology ^ denying 
that any of the books named by the god of Love are inappropriate 
or that his warning had any bearing on the length of the Prologue 
itself, and asserting that the inconsistencies of G are merely evi- 
dences of the haste of the reworking. Continuing, Koeppel 
advanced the rather startling opinion that the revision of the Pv-o- 
logue was undertaken with a view to making the Legend, or part 
of it, serve as one of the Canterbury Tales to be told by Chaucer 
himself. Hence the omission in G of passages lyrical in tone and 
inappropriate in a narrative poem. When Chaucer had completed 
the revision, Koeppel suggests, he was so disappointed with the 
result that he abandoned the idea of using it, and laid the manu- 
script away among papers not intended for circulation. 

In 1896, Max Kaluza, reviewing^ Skeat's treatment of the 
problem in his introduction to the Legend in the Oxford Chaucer,^ 
expressed a belief in ten Brink's theory which had not been at all 
shaken by Koch's arguments against it. He attempted no discus- 
sion of the question, however, and was content with challenging 
the English editor to answer ten Brink's arguments in detail. 

The conclusions of ten Brink as to the chronology of the Pro- 
logues elicited further approval in America from Frank Jewett 
Mather, Jr. In a foot-note to his edition of selections from the 
Canterbury Tales,^ published in 1899, Dr. Mather not only 
accepted the order of the versions as definitely fixed, but even 
turned ten Brink's conjecture as to the date of F into unhesitating 
certainty, declaring G to be "a revised version made after the 

^ In EngUsche Studien, xvii, 196. 

^ lAteraturblatt fiir germanische und romanische Philologie, 1893, February, col. 51. 
^ In EngUsche Studien, xxii, 271. * Vol. in, p. xxi. 

^ The Prologue^ The Knighfs Tale, and The Nun^s Priesfs Tale, Cambridge, 1899, 
p. xxiii, n. 



8 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

queen's death m 1394^ with the omission and alteration of matter 
personal to her.'' 

The challenge of Kaluza, which remained unanswered by 
Skeat, was taken up in 1900 by a French scholar, Prof. Emile 
Legouis, in a paper entitled, ^^Quel fut le premier compose par 
Chaucer des deux prologues de la L^gende des Femmes Exem- 
plaires?"^ In this paper Legouis protested against ten Brink's 
^^ chronological preoccupation/' and adopting a method already 
slightly used by Skeat endeavored to show (1) that an examina- 
tion of the plan of the Prologue discloses decided improvements 
in F, and (2) that the variant readings are so much better in F as 
to justify fully the conclusion that G is the earlier form. Com- 
bating ten Brink's arguments one by one he urged that the men- 
tion of Chaucer's old age is significant only wdien a long interval 
between the two Prologues is assumed, an assumption opposed to 
reason, and that their absence from F is better explained on the 
ground that Chaucer omitted as too personal the passages contain- 
ing them. In the probability that the ballad originally had the 
refrain My lady eometh, Legouis found no evidence as to the order 
of the Prologues, and in the greater definiteness of F as to the 
plan of the Legend, a positive argument for his own view. The 
omission of the list of books in Love's reproof, he regarded as a 
great gain, the reproof being in his opinion pedantic and verbose. 
With due caution to avoid the over-certainty which he blames 
in ten Brink, Legouis suggests that the obvious dedication to the 
queen in F may be due to a sudden change in Chaucer's relation 
to the court — occasioned perhaps by the grant of permission to 
exercise his office by deputy — which made it possible for him to 
dedicate the work to the queen. 

In a review of Legouis' argument for Englische Studien,'^ Koch 
hailed it as an independent confirmation of his own view, for 
Legouis did not see the appendix to Chronology until his own 
investigations were complete. It was now Koch's turn to declare 
the relation of the two Prologues settled for all time. 

Those who had previously agreed with ten Brink received 

^ Revue de V Enseignment des Langues Vivants, Avril, 1900, p. 58. 
2 Vol. XXX, p. 456. 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 9 

Legouis's article with less favor, and vrere not inclined to change 
their views. Koeppel, reviewing a Chaucer monograph/ seized 
an opportunity to say that he still held firmly to the priority of F 
and to his theory that the revision was designed to serve as a Can- 
terbury Tale. 

Legouis' article was reviewed for Anglia, BeiblaU,^ by Gustav 
Binz, who refused to be convinced that G is an original version. 
He did not find it possible, however, in view of the glaring incon- 
sistencies of G, to regard it as a thorough-going revision. In order 
to save the credit of the poet, he assumed that G represents a revi- 
sion which was never completed, and which might therefore very 
naturally be inconsistent with itself. With Legouis's rather sweep- 
ing esthetic judgment in favor of F, Binz was disposed to disagree, 
regarding many of the so-called improvements as extremely doubt- 
ful. He held the suggestion that the ballad might have been twice 
changed, the second time back to its original form, and that the 
old age passages were omitted as too personal, to be equally insuf- 
ficient. Naturally he could not accept the conjecture of Legouis 
that the motive for the revision w^as Chaucer's desire to praise the 
queen, but held rather, with ten Brink, that Chaucer's coolness 
toward the court in his later years inspired if not the revision itself 
at least the changes which were made in the course of it. 

Evidence of a somewhat different character was next brought to 
bear upon the problem by J. B. Bilderbeck. This evidence, which 
was presented in a dissertation^ published in 1902, consisted chiefly 
of a detailed examination of the manuscripts. After collating the 
manuscripts, Mr. Bilderbeck proceeded to examine the two versions 
of the Prologue more narrowly, classifying the minor variations as 
improvements in structure or style. The results of these investi- 
gations convinced him that Cambridge Ms. Gg. 4, 27 presents 
a first draft of the separate legends up to and including that of 
Ariadne, and that the variations which appear in other Mss. are 
in large measure due to a revision made by the poet himself. The 
presumption thus established in favor of the priority of the G ver- 

1 Englische Studien, xxx, 467. 2 y^i ^i, p. 231-237. 

'Bilderbeck, Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, London (Hazell, Watson & 
Viney, Ld. ), 1902. 



10 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

sion of the Prologue, which is found only in Ms. Gg. 4, 27, Mr. 
Bilderbeck found to be fully confirmed by his comparison of the 
two versions. By means of a bolder interpretation of the alle- 
gorical allusions than has heretofore been attempted, he concluded 
further that the writing of the Legend was undertaken by the com- 
mand of Queen Anne in 1385, and that the story of one heroine 
was added to it each year. The fact that evidences of revision 
extend over six of the stories, together with various other conside- 
rations, serves to fix the date of the F version as 1390. 

In a recently published^ study entitled, '^ The Prologue to the 
Legend of Good Women as related to the French Marguerite Poems 
and the Filostrato/^ Mr. John L. Lowes follows ten Brink in dis- 
crediting the earlier view as to the priority of G, and departs even 
more widely from traditional opinion. He rejects altogether the 
assumption, first made by ten Brink ^ himself and carried still 
further by Bilderbeck, that F, at least, is an elaborate compliment 
to Queen Anne, who is allegorically represented by Alcestis and 
the daisy. He shows (1) that the French Marguerite poems be- 
long in general to a period just previous to the commonly accepted 
date of the Legend ; (2) that certain passages peculiar to F, usually 
interpreted as allegory, depend more or less directly upon these 
poems and the Filostrato ; (3) that F 1-196 is in many respects 
parallel in structure to Deschamps' Lay de Franchise , and that F 
from 197 to the end is similarly parallel to Froissart's Paradys 
d^ Amours. He concludes that the apparently allegorical allusions 
in F are merely borrowings from French and Italian sources, 
and that G is a revision made when the poet's recollection of these 
sources had been dulled by time. 

The order of the two Prologues, therefore, though at least twice 
" settled for all time " is still one of the most unsettled of Chaucer 
problems. That it can ever be settled to the absolute conviction 
of every critic, without the aid of entirely new external evidence, is 
perhaps too much to hope for. The effort in this paper will be to 
present a conclusion based upon a more elaborate investigation of 
the internal evidence than has heretofore been attempted. 

^ Publications of the Mod. Lang. Asso. of America, Vol. xix, p. 593. 
^ Chaucer Studien, p. 147. 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 11 



III. Chaucer's Motive for Revising the Prologue. 

Chaucer was not a man of wealth and leisure. Most of his lite- 
rary work seems to have been done in the intervals of a busy 
administrative life, and to have been inspired and carried on by an 
enthusiasm that overcame difficulties and led him constantly to 
abandon one poem unfinished in order to attempt another. It was 
not his habit to dwell loog on any one piece of work or to revise a 
poem already written. His revision of the Prologue in question 
represents, as has been said above, apparently an exceptional and 
unique experience. 

Instances of the working over of old material are not wanting 
in Chaucer, but the reworking was always for the sake of making 
the older poetry serve a new purpose. The two Prologues y how- 
ever, stand in precisely the same relation to the rest of the Legend. 
There is no parallel here to the use of earlier poems as Canterbury 
Tales, or to the working in of early stanzas in the course of more 
mature work. For Chaucer's painstaking revision of a poem, 
which when revised should have the same general form and the 
same relation to his other poems, some special motive must have 
existed. 

What this motive was has been variously conjectured. Furni- 
vall,^ though he noticed the lack of clear allusions to the queen in 
G, drew no conclusions from the fact and was satisfied with observ- 
ing that the variations show improvement in F. He believed, 
apparently, that Chaucer revised the Prologue merely to make it 
better, ten Brink, ^ the first to make use of the allegorical allu- 
sions to the queen as a means of dating the poem, concluded that 
F, the only version then known to him, was designed as an ex- 
pression of gratitude to the queen for influence exerted by her to 
secure him permission to exercise his office of comptroller by 
deputy. The date of F was thus fixed as 1385. 

In his edition of the I^egend published in 1889, Skeat accepted 
this date. He accounted for the existence of the two versions by 

1 AthencEum, Oct. 21, 1871, p. 528. ^ Chaucer Studien, i, 149. 



12 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

supposing that Avhen Chaucer had finished G he was not satisfied 
with it. The expression of gratitude which he had intended to 
convey did not come out with sufficient clearness. ^^ So/' says 
Skeat, " he at once set about to amend and alter it ; the first draft, 
of which he had no reason to be ashamed, being at the same time 
preserved.'' 

A fevf years later ten Brink ^ first expressed in print his belief 
in the priority of F. The occasion for the revision he assumed 
to be Chaucer's supposed intention about lo93 to take up the 
unfinished Legend and complete it. The real motive for his begin- 
ning this work by recasting the Prologue was his changed relation 
to the court. He had lost both his offices, and the royal favor 
which he had acknowledged in the first version was a thing of the 
past. Accordingly he changed the Prologue into a conventional 
poem, which should serve to introduce the Legend without convey- 
ing any play upon his earlier favorable relation to the queen. To 
account for the appearance of this revised version in only one 
manuscript, ten Brink was forced to make still another assump- 
tion, namely, that Chaucer gave up the project of completing the 
Legend before he had really begun it, and on that account withheld 
the later form from circulation. 

The most novel conjecture as to Chaucer's motive for revising 
the Prologue is that of Koeppel, who, having accepted ten Brink's 
judgment in regard to the order of the two versions, proposed a 
theory of his own to account for it. He assumed,^ as has been 
said above, that Chaucer intended at one time to use the Legend of 
Good Women as one of the Canterbury Tales to be told by himself. 
He found the Prologue as it appears in F, on account of its lyrical 
tone, its personal allusions, and its obvious allegory, ill adapted to 
this purpose and accordingly revised it. When the work was 
done he was still dissatisfied with the poem, and finally gave over 
his intention of using it as one of the Canterbury Tales. Hence 
the wider distribution of F. 

Both Koch and Legouis reached independently a conclusion 

^ Englische Studien, i, 13. 

^ Literaturblatt f. ger. u. rom. Phil, 1893, February, Col. 52, 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, 13 

quite the opposite of that of ten Brink, and diiFering in one essen- 
tial respect from that of Skeat. They proposed to date G shortly 
before February 17, 1385, — the date of the grant of permission 
to Chaucer to employ a deputy, — and F shortly after that time. 
This theory involved the assumption, already made by ten Brink, 
that the queen had something to do with the grant, and that the 
F version was intended as an expression of the poet's gratitude. 
The absence of clear allusions to the queen in G was explained by 
the lack of an occasion for them. 

Although Lowes does not assign any specific motive for the 
revision, he regards it as having resulted in a more compact and 
consistent poem ; and as ten Brink's theory is not available, we 
may assume that he believes Chaucer to have revised F to make 
it a better poem.^ 

Bilderbeck, though quite certain that F is a better version, looks 
elsewhere for the motive of the revision and finds it chiefly in a 
changed relation to King Richard. He says, ^'In 1390 in order 
to pay a high compliment to a king whose administration was 
winning golden opinions, and to a queen who had shown him 
signal marks of favour, he revised both the Prologue and the 
legends that he had already written.'' ^ But Bilderbeck had 
already asserted positively ^ that in G, as well as in F, Alcestis 
stands for Queen Anne. His view, therefore, coincides in the 
main with that of Skeat with which for our purpose it may be 
associated. 

There are thus open to us at least four possible views. We 
may believe that Chaucer revised the G Prologue to make a better 
poem of it, and that additions to it are merely incidental to that 
main purpose, or vice versa, that he revised F for a similar reason ; 
that he revised G because as an expression of gratitude to the 
queen it was inadequate and unsuccessful ; that he revised F to 
get allusions to the queen out of it, either on account of his changed 
relations to the court, or on account of his desire to make a 
Canterbury Tale of the Legend ; or finally, that he revised G to 

1 Cf. Lowes, p. 665. ' ^ Bilderbeck, p. 109. 

=^Ibid. p. 84. 



14 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

get allusions to the queen into a poem which did not before con- 
tain them. 

The first of these need not detain us long. Many minor vari- 
ations between G and F are certainly improvements in F ; but the 
most important changes were additions and omissions, which one 
does not need to study very long in order to become convinced 
that there was some special motive behind them. The faults of 
G, and they are not numerous, could have been remedied without 
the addition of 134 new lines. On the other hand the revision of 
F in the interest of better literary craftsmanship would surely not 
require the omission of so many good lines. The admission of 
Lowes, "that the B. version has the note of freshness, of spon- 
taneity, of composition con amore to a greater degree than A. — 
that it is even the more delightful version of the two ", ^ is a con- 
cession in favor of F not to be readily explained away by saying 
that that version was written currente calamo. It is perhaps worth 
while to observe further that those who regard G as a revision 
generally find it necessary to apologize for that version as hasty 
work. Thus Lowes ^ agrees with Binz ^ that after F 1. 390 the 
revision " was manifestly most perfunctorily carried out," and 
KoeppeP speaks of "die in manchen Kleinigheiten bemerkbare 
Hast der Umarbeitung.'' 

The assumption that Chaucer wrote the first version for the 
very purpose of expressing his gratitude to the king and the queen, 
and succeeded so badly that he had to rewrite the whole poem, 
does little credit to the mature powers of the poet. It seems 
strange, too, that he should, in that case, regard the unsatisfactory 
first draft as too good to throw away. The two versions are so 
different in spirit that it is very hard to believe in any hypothesis 
that does not involve some change of purpose. 

That this change of purpose was such that it resulted in an 
attempt to withdraw the dedication to the queen, and to remove all 
obvious allusions to her from the poem, is equally hard to believe. 

* Lowes, p. 683, n. 7. 

2 Lowes, p. 681, n. 3, p. 678, n. 4 (end). 

^ Anglia, Beiblatt, xi, 233-4. 

*Literaturblattf. ger. u. rom. Phil. 1893, February, col. 51. 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women, 15 

In the first place, as Koeppel has said/ it is very improbable that 
Chaucer ever interrupted the course of his work on the Cantei^hury 
Tales to turn back to an uncompleted poem of a different char- 
acter. It is still more improbable that if he did so he thought it 
necessary to revise the Prologue before he wrote any new legends. 
The intrinsic value of the poem as a whole could not be affected 
by the lapse of time, and the F version, — granting for the moment 
that it was the original, — could serve as well in 1393 as at any 
other time. There is, therefore, no motive left but personal pique, 
of which we have no grounds for accusing Chaucer. The some- 
what elaborate theory of ten Brink is attained by successive steps, 
each hypothesis being constructed to explain and support the pre- 
ceding one, until he has got surprisingly far from the starting 
point of established fact. 

The theory that Chaucer intended to use the Legend or part of 
it as a Canterbury Tale is equally unconvincing, and shows its 
weakness in that, like ten Brink's, it compels us to believe that 
Chaucer did not know his own mind. In support of his conten- 
tion, Koeppel cites only two passages from the text. They are 
equally inconclusive. I cannot believe that G 11. 85-88, 

For myn entent is, or I fro you fare, 
The naked text in English to declare 
Of many a story, or elles of many a geste, 
As autors seyu ; leveth him if yow leste I 

is any better adapted to narration by a Canterbury pilgrim than 
the lines which correspond to it in F. 

97-102 But wherefor that I spak, to give credence 

To olde stories, and doon hem reverence, 
And that men mosten more thing beleve 
Then men may seen at eye or elles preve ? 
That shal I seyn, whan that I see my tyme ; 
I may not al at ones speke in ryme. 

The allusion to the ladies attending Alcestis, in the words, 

Have hem now in thy Legend alle in minde, 

which appears in F (1. 557) and is wanting in G, is merely a 

^ Literaturblatt f. ger. u. rom. Phil. 1893, February, col. 52. 



16 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

statement of what is equally implied in both versions, namely, that 
the story of Alcestis is to be the climax of a series of stories. We 
read entirely too much meaning into the word alle, if we suppose 
that its omission in G implies that Chaucer meant to leave him- 
self free to omit a few heroines. 

Two lines peculiar to G allude to the legends as written : 

529 Let be the chaf and wryte wel of the corn. 

532 For of Alceste shulde thy wryting be. 

Moreover, the tone of the poem is bookish, — the allusion to the 
poets of the flower and leaf controversy is characteristic, — and G 
is even farther than F from the spirit and manner of a Canterbury 
prologue. It is impossible to believe that if Chaucer ever had 
tried to adapt F to such a purpose, he would not have succeeded 
far better than Dr. Koeppel would have us believe. 

Only one assumption remains to be considered, namely, that the 
G-version is the earlier, and that F represents a revision under- 
taken to make it an occasional poem. This theory, Avhich Legouis 
advances somewhat hesitatingly, at the close of an investigation in 
which he has proceeded on the principle that Chaucer could only 
have revised the Prologue to give it greater cohesion and clear- 
ness, accords better with the facts than any other that has been 
proposed. The facts are that the two versions differ most sig- 
nificantly, not in allusions to the poet's age, or in the mention of 
works by Chaucer or by his favorite authors, not primarily in 
literary merit, but in the relation of the two poems to the queen. 

In order to make this clear we will proceed to examine the two 
Prologues with regard to their larger variations. A cursory reading 
of the two forms side by side suggests that G, which is shorter, is 
also simpler, and more conventional than F. In G, after an intro- 
duction in which he discusses his fondness for old books and for 
daisies, hinting that love and ancient lore are to be associated in 
the work which he is about to begin, the poet takes up in a more 
specific manner the preparation for the Legend. He describes 
under the pretty fiction of a dream, inspired by a May-day in the 
fields, the impulse that moved him to write and the plan of the 
work. The daisy is a type of Alcestis, and Alcestis, the model of 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 17 

purity and fidelity among women. The whole is an appropriate 
prologue, and nothing else. 

F, on the other hand, is more elaborate than G, more subjective, 
and in the poet's expression of his own feelings, much more fer- 
vent. If we compare with the introduction in G, lines 1—88, the 
corresponding lines in F, 1—103, we shall find that the most sig- 
nificant differences consist of additions in F. 

Examples of such additions are : 

F 50 That blisful sighte softneth al my sorwe, 
So glad am I whan that I have presence 
Of hit, to doon al maner reverence, 



56 And I love hit, and ever y-lyke newe. 
And ever shal, til that myn herte dye ; 
Al swere I nat, of this I wol nat lye, 
Ther loved no wight hotter in his lyve. 



82 ... the flour, 

Whom that I serve as I have wit or might. 
She is the clernesse and the verray light. 
That in this derke worlde me wynt and ledeth. 
The herte inwith my sorowful brest you dredeth, 
And loveth so sore, that ye ben verrayly 
The maistresse of my wit, and nothing I. 
My word, my werk, is knit so in your bonde, 
That, as an harpe obeyeth to the honde 
And maketh hit soune after his fingeringe. 
Eight so mowe ye out of myn herte bringe 
Swich vois, right as you list, to laughe or pleyne. 
Be ye my gyde and lady sovereyne ; 
As to myn erthly god, to yow I calle. 
Both in this werke and in my sorwes alle. 

These passages indicate unmistakably that the daisy, which is 
in G merely a ^ flower white and red,' here represents a lady whom 
Chaucer wishes to compliment as highly as possible, and whose 
patronage he invokes for his poem. Although these avowals are 
couched somewhat in the language of the conventional love-com- 
plaint, such expressions as " al maner reverence,'' " the herte you 
dredeth," "my lady sovereyne," "myn erthly god," lead us to 
suspect a different relation from that of a lover to his mistress, a 
suspicion which, as we shall see, is confirmed farther on. 



18 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

The objection of Lowes ^ to this allegorical interpretation, on 
the ground that the passages just cited echo similar phrases in cer- 
tain French poems and the Filostrato, I do not regard as at all 
conclusive. The Marguerite poems in question, as Lowes admits, 
are all allegorical. The invocation of the Filostrato, also, is 
addressed to a real person. This Chaucer must have taken for 
granted in both cases, if, indeed, he did not know it perfectly well. 
Now it is beside the point to argue, as Lowes does,^ that Alcestis 
is a real person in any parallel sense ; for she is no more real to 
Chaucer than the heroines of love who accompany her. Nothing 
seems to me more natural than that if Chaucer had determined to 
make an occasional poem of the G-Prologue, directing its allegori- 
cal meaning upon a living person, such phrases, already happily 
used for a similar purpose, should at once come into his mind. It 
seems quite unnatural that, if neither Prologue is allegorical, he 
should have carefully omitted such phrases merely because his 
recollection of the originals was dulled. Chaucer borrowed freely 
from other poets ; but he did not borrow blindly, and his method 
in other cases justifies our belief that in this instance he made use 
of these lines, especially those from the Filostrato, because they 
specifically suited his purpose. 

It is to be remembered, too, that Chaucer had a tradition of his 
own, which, aside from the influence of other poems, led in the 
direction of allegorical compliment. No one has yet ventured to 
deny that the Duchesse and the Parlement are allegorical, and that 
the latter is a celebration of Queen Anne. 

The only other difference of importance up to this point is the 
omission in F of the announcement (G 85-88) of the author's 
intention to tell in English stories which he has gathered from old 
authors. This revelation he postpones in F with, 

" That shal I seyn whan that I see my tyme." 

This difference concerns us now only as it indicates more clearly 
the single purpose of G. Verses 85—88 in G are a fitting climax 

^ Lowes, p. 669 ff. The relation of the passages to their sources will be consid- 
ered later. 
^ Lowes, p. 673. 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 19 

to the introduction. The lack of coherence between 88 and 89 
Chaucer could easily have remedied without rewriting the whole, 
and G thus amended would be so far a perfectly satisfactory pro- 
logue as such. As an expression of devotion to a lady of high 
rank, it would stand in need of important changes. If we suppose 
the introduction of the avowal in F 83-96 to be one of these 
changes, the omission of G 85-88 becomes desirable. 

Passing on from the introduction we find, besides various minor 
changes, many of them in the direction of greater devoutness on 
the part of the poet, two considerable additions in F. In F 152— 
170 the poet dwells much more fully on the mating of the birds, 
and in F 171-187 he introduces a new description of the delight- 
ftdness of the flowery meadow. Neither of these seems necessary 
to add coherence or clearness to G, but both are in keeping with 
the more elaborate and subjective character of F. The allusion 
to " . . . Daunger for a tyme a lord,^' and " Pitee " that made 
" Mercy passen right,'' may with no great stretch of the imagina- 
tion be regarded as an allegorical reminiscence of the experience 
of one dependent on the bounty of a royal patron.^ 

The second addition is a glorification of the daisy, which echoes 
the avowal in F 83-96, and suggests palpably the same allegory. 
Note particularly lines 184-187 : 

'* The dayesye or elles the 'ye of day,' 
The emperice and flour of floures alle. 
I pray to god that faire mot she falle, 
And alle that loven floures, for hir sake ! ' ' 

The next considerable variation between G and F is in the 
ballad. In G the ballad is sung ^^ carolwyse '' by the attendants 
of the queen with the refrain, 

" Alceste is here, that al that may desteyne ; " 

and in F the ballad is sung by the poet himself, " in prey sing of 
this lady fre,'' with the refrain, 

"My lady cometh, that al this may disteyne." 
^ Cf. Skeat, Oxford Chaucer, iii, p. xxiii ; Bilderbeck, p. 102. 



20 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

Obviously the poet is more directly responsible for the senti- 
ments of a ballad when it is sung in his own person, and the 
ballad itself is more likely to have an allegorical significance when 
the subject of it is unidentified. If the queen is to be identified 
with Alcestis in G, there is no hint in the poem that this is the 
author's intention. In F, '^ ^ly lady cometh '' is instantly asso- 
ciated with ^^ . . . my gyde and lady sovereyne/' and the allegory 
is clear. As if to make it clearer still, the poet adds at the close 
of the ballad in F five lines (271-275) in which he repeats the 
thought of the ballad with the conclusion : 

**So passeth al my lady sovereyne." 

In place of the ballad as sung by the ladies in G, there appears 
in F a song which they sing (11. 296-299) : 

" Hele and honour 

To trouthe of womanhede, and to this flour 
That berth our alder prys in figuringe ! 
Hir whyte coroun berth the witnessinge ! ' ' 

in which a similar thought is expressed. 

Another important difference between G and F lies in the tirade 
of the god of Love against the poet. The allusion to the poet's age 
and the long discussion of his books (G 258-312), are wholly 
w^anting in F. Now neither of these passages is out of place in a 
conventional prologue. It is not unnatural that the god should 
accuse the poet of despising love because he could no longer feel 
its fire, and it is quite natural that after Chaucer's appreciative 
allusion to old books in the introduction, we should now hear more 
of them. In a prologue that is intended to serve as a compliment 
and a dedication, however, these passages are least essential. They 
can be dropped out without injury to the narrative, and they leave 
the prologue free to center more definitely about its heroine. 

From this point on for nearly 200 lines the variations are very 
slight. Then we come in F 496 to the following couplet : 

" And whan this book is maad, yive hit the quene 
On my behalf e, at Eltham or at Shene. ' ' 

This is as clear a dedication as we have any right to expect, 
clearer than any allusion found in the Book of the Duchesse or the 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 21 

Parliament of Birds, botli of which are admittedly occasional 
poems. We have already seen that F differs from G chiefly by 
the addition of passages expressing romantic devotion to a lady 
under the figure of the daisy. The tone of these passages has 
suggested the suspicion that they are aimed at a royal personage. 
This couplet settles the matter. It would be absurd for the poet 
to dedicate to the queen a poem in which some other " lady sove- 
reyne'' is lauded as his "erthly god/' "emperice and flour of 
floures alle '' surpassing all others in truth and beauty. 

Prologue F, therefore, is an occasional poem designed as an 
elaborate compliment to the queen of England/ whose betrothal 
Chaucer has already celebrated in the Parliament. Prologue G 
is not. Either Chaucer revised F in order to get the allusions to 
the queen out of the poem, or he revised G in order to dedicate 
the work to her, and to make the Prologue an allegory in her 
honor. That in a moment of pique over his lack of favor at 
court, Chaucer rewrote F in order to undo his work, is a suppo- 
sition that suits neither the spirit of the poet as it is elsewhere 
revealed to us, nor the chronology of his life and writings. Chaucer 
assuredly had too much good sense to attempt to withdraw a dedi- 
cation already made and circulated, even if we can think him 
mean-spirited enough to wish to do so. 

It is much easier to believe that after the first draft of the con- 
ventional prologue was finished, and had passed into the hands of 
a few of his friends, Chaucer determined for some reason to dedi- 
cate the work to the queen, and rewrote the Prologue accordingly. 
Whether his motive for doing so was gratitude for permission to 
exercise his office of Comptroller by deputy, it is vain for us to 
conjecture, for we do not know that the queen had anything to do 
with the matter.^ Some other specific favor or some interest 
manifested by the queen in the work which he had undertaken is 
quite as likely to have furnished an occasion. Whatever the first 
motive, a reasonable and sufficient purpose in the revision is 
apparent, and that purpose creates a strong presumption in favor 
of F as the revised form. 

iCf. Bilderbeck, p. 100. ^Cf. Tatlock, Mod. Pkilol. i, 327-8. 



22 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 



ly. The Ballad. 

So much has been made of the ballad in its relation to the two 
versions of the Prologue as to justify a separate treatment of that 
problem. The ballad itself is substantially the same in both 
Prologues^ with the exception of a significant variation in the 
refrain. The variation is as follows : 

G Alceste is here, that al that may desteyne. 
F My lady cometh, that al this may disteyne. 

As the meaning of the ballad depends wholly upon its refrain, 
this variation is of considerable importance. In G the fair one 
who so far surpasses in beauty and fidelity all the good women 
of history, is the Greek Alcestis ; in F she is the unidentified 
< My lady.' 

Equally important is a variation in the context w^hich gives the 
ballad a different relation to the poem in each. In G the ballad 
is prefaced by the words (11. 199-202) : 

And after that they wenten in compas, 
Daunsinge aboute this flour an esy pas, 
And songen, as it were in carol-wyse, 
This balade, which that I shal yow devyse. 

In F, instead of these lines appear the following (11. 247-248) : 

And therfor may I seyn, as thinketh me. 
This song, in preysing of this lady fre. 

In these two variations alone, ten Brink ^ saw conclusive proof of 
the priority of F. For, he reasoned, the reproof of the god of 
Love in F, 537 fP. : 

.... A ful gret negligence 
Was hit to thee, that ilke tyme thou made 
"Hyd, Absolon, thy tresses" in balade. 
That thou forgete hir in thy song to sette, 

can have no meaning unless, according to the god's interpretation 
of it, the refrain alludes to some one else than Alcestis. More- 

* Englische Studien, xvn, 17. 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women, 23 

over, since the god of Love is familiar with the ballad, although 
it was not addressed to him but merely communicated to the 
reader, he must know it in an original form independent of the 
Legend. From his reproof it is clear that he knows only the form 
which has the refrain, 3fy lady cometk. Hence F contains the 
original ballad and is consequently beyond question the original 
prologue. 

All this was to Koch ^ just as certain proof of the precise oppo- 
site, though his answer to it is less satisfactory than that of Legouis. 
Legouis ^ accuses ten Brink of forgetting the rights of fiction, and 
argues that whether the ballad was written before the Prologue or 
not, it is here conceived as improvised on the spot, and must be 
so accepted both by the reader and by the god of Love, who is 
presumed to be, like other gods, omniscient. This view seems to 
me to be thoroughly just, ten Brink has in fact strangely con- 
fused literal fact and poetic fiction, and his conclusion, so far as 
it depends upon the god of Love's acquaintance with Chaucer's 
verse, has a very unstable foundation. 

The god does, indeed, elsewhere in the poem, allude to the 
Romance of the Rose and to Troilus and Cressida, and his queen 
names several more of Chaucer's works; yet we do not feel it 
necessary to conceive of either of them as having read a Chaucer 
manuscript. We must remember that Love is a god, and a 
dream-god at that, and not bound by the restrictions to which 
mortal readers of Chaucer are subject. The fact that the ballad 
is addressed to the reader and not to the god of Love is, therefore, 
unimportant. In G the poet uses a very simple convention in 
having a lyrical passage in a narrative poem sung by some of the 
actors. In F he abandons the convention and, with a word of 
explanation, boldly adopts the lyrical form himself. To the ordi- 
nary reader, and one might add, to the poet himself, no necessary 
incongruity is involved in the second method. One must be in 
a particular frame of mind before it occurs to one, on reading this 
poem, to ask whether the poet composed the three stanzas of the 



^ Chronology of Chaucer's Writings^ p. 84. 
2 Legouis, p. 61. 



24 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

ballad on the spot, and whether the god of Love overheard him, 
or read his heart. 

Besides concurring with ten Brink in the conclusions just cited, 
Lowes ^ endeavors to give the ballad special significance by bring- 
ing it into relation with a ballad of Froissart^ in the Paradys 
d^ Amours. The first stanza of this ballad recites the virtues of 
various flowers, and concludes with the refrain (1. 1635), 

Sus toutes flours j'aime la margherite, 

and the remaining stanzas are a further glorification of the 
marguerite with the same refrain. Lowes argues that inasmuch 
as Chaucer had already adequately celebrated the daisy he could 
not follow Froissart closely, but was forced to substitute for the 
flowers the names of women, whom in a sense they typify. 

The question of the source of the ballad, apart from its possi- 
ble bearing on the order of the Prologues, does not now concern 
us, and need not be discussed at length. It should be said, 
however, that the only resemblance between the ballad of Chaucer 
and that of Froissart is a likeness in method, and that not remark- 
ably close. The source already suggested by Skeat,^ if we are to 
look for a specific source, is much more reasonable. This ballad, 
printed by Raynaud,^ among works " attributables a Deschamps/^ 
we may reasonably suppose Chaucer to have known ; though the 
fact that the citation of well-known characters, who are compared 
with one's sweetheart to her advantage, is a common convention,^ 
makes it impossible to say that this poem served as his model. 
In any case nothing is proved as to the order of the ballads in 
date of composition. In G we have Chaucer's first use of the 
type for one purpose, — the celebration of a heroine of antiquity, 
who must be named in the refrain if it is to be understood, — and 
in F a second use of it for a different purpose, the celebration of 
a woman then living. In the second case his purpose coincides 
with that of the conventional type, and consequently the type is 
followed more closely. 

^ Lowes, p. 655 ff. ^ Oeuvres (ed. Scheler), i, 49. 

^ Oxford Chaucer, ill, 298. 

* Deschamps, Oeuwes Completes, x, p. xlix. 

^ Cf . Bcdades xlvii and lx in the same volume of Deschamps. 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women, 25 

Whatever we may think as to the source of Chaucer's graceful 
praise of his " lady sovereyne '^ it is unnecessary to assume that 
these verses existed as an independent poem before they were 
used in the Prologue. Absalom ^ and Jonathan, who are named 
in the ballad, are not available for a Legend of Good Women ; 
but the ballad does not pretend to be a table of contents. It 
occurs in the Prologue, in both versions, before the injunction to 
write the Legend has been mentioned, and is in no way limited 
in its range by the plan of the poem as a whole. 

Indeed, the mention of Absalom and Jonathan is here especially 
appropriate, for of Absalom it is said,^ ^^ In all Israel there was 
none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty '' ; and 
David in his lamentation over Jonathan said of him,^ '^ Thy love 
to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.'' From the 
superlative types of beauty and fidelity among men, the poet passes 
on to recount examples of heroic and ill-fated virtue among 
women, reaching his climax in the wifely devotion of Alcestis. 
In all this there is no reason for believing that the ballad was not 
composed specifically for use in the G version, and that it was so 
composed is the more natural assumption. It is, however, much 
more than a mere assumption, for a close scrutiny of the text of 
the ballad should convince any one that it was first written for the 
glorification of Alcestis. The line common to both versions (F 
253, G 207), 

Mak of your wyfhod no comparisoun, 

is clearly an allusion to the devotion of Alcestis in dying in her 
husband's stead. In F, regarded apart from its context as a 
typical love lyric, this line would be inexplicable. The ballad 
contains other expressions such as, " trouthe of love," " of love 
swich peyne" "your trouthe," which would be difficult if not 
meaningless in a poem addressed to an unidentified mistress. 
These facts seem to me to preclude the possibility that the ballad 
as it appears in F ever had an independent existence, and to ren- 
der nugatory ten Brink's argument based on that assumption. 

^ Cf. allusions to his beauty in balades of Deschamps, especially i, 150 ; iv, 347. 
» II Samuel xiv, 25. » II Samuel i, 26. 



26 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

It is equally evident that the ballad was not originally written 
for the place which it occupies in F, whence it follows as a corol- 
lary that its relation to that version was in no way influenced by 
Froissart's ballad. In F the ballad is recited avowedly in order 
to give fitting praise to the beauty of the queen whom the god of 
Love leads with him. It is introduced by the lines (244-248) : 

.... In this world, thogh that men wolde seke, 
Half hir beautee shulde men nat finde 
In creature that formed is by kinde. 
And therfor may I seyn, as thinketh me, 
This song, in preysing of this lady fre. 

Yet the ballad is not devoted primarily to the praise of her 
beauty, though some allusion is made to it, but to her fidelity in 
love and her wifehood, qualities which could not be discerned at 
first sight. But neither the reader nor the dreamer has had any 
intimation that this lady is Alcestis. The ballad in F is there- 
fore somewhat out of harmony with its context, and bears the 
appearance of a passage wrested from its former connection to 
serve a new purpose. Especially is this the case if, as Lowes 
urges,^ no allegorical significance is to be admitted, and the reader 
may not assume that the daisy-crowned queen is the patroness 
already invoked under the figure of the daisy, and now indicated 
a little more clearly as queen and wife. 

In G, on the other hand, the ballad is perfectly in place. We 
are plainly told in G 179 that, 

Hir name was Alceste the debonayre ; 

and Alcestis is named in the refrain by those who are supposed to 
know all her virtues. The ballad is in fact an Alcestis poem in 
both versions, having no connection in se with the Marguerite 
cult, and it is necessary to assume that it was first written in the 
version which frankly names Alcestis. 

It is quite possible, of course, that the ballad as it appears in G 
first existed as an independent poem. One might even argue with 
some show of reason that the ballad thus independently composed 
represents the germ of the Legend. We know from his allusion 

1 Lowes, p. 670 f. 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women, 27 

to her in Troiliis (Bk. v, 11. 1527-1533) that Chaucer knew the 
story of Alcestis and was interested in it. Suppose that this 
interest led him to celebrate her, as the preeminent example of 
wifely devotion, in a ballad after the manner of Deschamps. 
The success of the ballad suggested a larger scheme, and he 
thought of telling in some detail the stories of the women whom 
he had merely named in the shorter poem. The new undertaking 
took the form of a succession of stories of heroic women with 
Alcestis, as before, the climax. The idea of representing the 
whole work as a penance imposed by the god of Love on account 
of his having written Troilus and the Romance of the Rose, gave 
the Prologue. The Legend is thus the ballad expanded. After 
the Prologue was written, and possibly a tale or two, it occurred 
to him for some reason to make Alcestis a type of the queen of 
England, and thus to dedicate the poem to her. Accordingly the 
Prologue was rewritten, and the ballad appeared in the revision in 
a more subjective form with a refrain suited to the new purpose. 
I do not say that this theory is convincing, or indeed that it is 
anything more than possible, yet it is after all as plausible as that 
upon which ten Brink has based so much of his argument for the 
priority of F. 

Leaving the region of pure conjecture, we may notice that the 
variations between the two ballads are just such as we might 
expect in a change from the literal to the allegorical. If the 
verses are to serve as a compliment to the queen, they must not 
too literally praise Alcestis, and they must be in line with the 
preceding allegory. The indefiniteness of F and its subjective 
character are, therefore, ends to be gained by the revision. The 
evidence of the text is that both have been gained at the cost of 
some slight disturbance of a previously adopted plan, and the 
allusions to Alcestis make it impossible to assume the opposite 
process as an effort at improvement in structure. 

If my reasoning in regard to the ballad has been correct, 
certain inferences appear to be inevitable. These are (1) that the 
incongruity involved in the allusion of the god of Love to the 
ballad in F is more fancied than real, and is in any case not to be 
explained by assuming the priority of F ; (2) that the ballad in 



28 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

F is Dot an imitation of Froissart's ballad in the Paradys 
d' Amours; (3) that the ballad as it appears in G represents its 
original form, written presumably for use in that version ; (4) 
that the F ballad shows distinct traces of adaptation for use 
in that version, where it is saved from incongruity only by its 
allegorical ^ interpretation. 



V. The Plan of the Legend and the Structure of 

THE Prologue. 

It has already been said, in the preceding chapter, that the 
ballad is not to be taken literally as representing the plan of the 
Legend. This is evident enough from the fact that in the nine 
legends that are extant Chaucer has told the stories of two hero- 
ines, Medea and Philomela, who are not named in the ballad. In 
a line common to both versions (G 186, F 283), he has told us of 
nineteen ladies who constitute an inner circle about Alcestis, and 
who are, generally speaking, identical with the ladies named in 
the ballad. In his injunction to the poet, however, the god of 
Love has not committed him to a definite list of names, but has 
given him wide latitude both as to metres and subject matter. 

A too literal interpretation of a similar enumeration in the 
Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale (Canterbury Tales j B 60— 
77) has given rise to an unnecessary difficulty. Speaking of 
Chaucer's many stories of lovers, the Man of Law says : 

^ That is, the allusions to wifehood and fidelity are somewhat justified if they 
are seen to apply to the actual patroness of the poem already invoked and glori- 
fied under the figure of the daisy. Neither Richard nor his queen need have 
been offended by the later identification with Alcestis in F 513 as, 

She that for her husbonde chus to dye, 
And eek to goon to helle, rather than he ; 

for, since Alcestis is not a creation of Chaucer's own imagination, he must take 
her as she is, if at all. There is no necessity to press the allegory to the literal 
fulfilment of details. Anne is merely credited with devotion suflicient for a 
similar sacrifice had need required. The royal pair might as reasonably have 
been indignant at being likened to tercel and formel in the Parliament of Birds. 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 29 

Who-so that wol his large volume seek 
Cleped the Seintes Legende of Cupyde, 
There may he seen the large woundes wyde 
Of Lucresse, and of Babilan Tisbee ; 
The swerd of Dido for the fals Enee ; 
The tree of Phillis for hir Demophon ; 
The pleinte of Di;mire and Hermion, 
Of Adriane and of Isiphilee ; 
The bareyne yle stonding in the see ; 
The dreynte Leander for his Ero ; 
The teres of Eleyne, and eek the wo 
Of Brixseyde, and of thee, Ladomea ; 
The crueltee of thee, queen Medea, 
Thy litel children hanging by the hals 
For thy lason, that was of love so fals ! 
O Ypermistra, Penelopee, Alceste 
Your wyfhod he comendeth with the beste ! 
But certeinly no word ne wryteth he 
Of thilke wikke ensample of Canacee. 

It is obvious that this list does not coincide either with the 
legends as we have them, or with the names mentioned in the 
ballad. The discrepancy in names and the fact that the Man of 
Law speaks of the book as a '^ large volume," led During ^ to 
assume that the ten legends necessary to complete the scheme as 
suggested in the Prologue were actually written, though now lost. 
His view, however, did not meet with general acceptance. Con- 
cerning the problem, Skeat remarks,^ ^' There is no reason for sup- 
posing that he ever wrote complete tales about Deianira, Hermione, 
Hero, Helen, Briseis, Laodomia, or Penelope, any more than he 
did about Alcestis. But it is highly probable that just at the 
period of writing his Introduction to the Man of Law's Py-ologue 
he was seriously intending to take up again his ^Legend' and was 
planning how to continue it.'' A similar opinion was held by 
ten Brink,^ who connected with Chaucer's supposed intention to 
complete the Legend his revision of the Prologue, and assumed 
that the variations between the ballad and the list just cited were 
indications of a change of plan. The fact that lines 554-559 of 
F, which seem to mention the original plan of the Legend, are 

^Chaucer's Werke, l, 272. ^Oxford Chaucer, ill, xxvi. 

' Englische Studien, xvn, 18. 



30 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

wanting in G, he regarded as strong confirmation of these indica- 
tions and a clear proof that F represents the original plan. The 
lines in question are as follows : 

Thise other ladies sittinge here arowe 
Ben in thy balade, if thou canst hem knowe, 
And in thy bokes alle thou shalt hem finde ; 
Have hem now in thy Legend alle in minde. 

To this Koch replied that it was all quite true, but that it 
merely served to prove that after Chaucer had deviated from his 
original plan, he thought it necessary to add these lines as a 
justification of the greater freedom which he had assumed. That 
two such diametrically opposed conclusions can be drawn from the 
same set of facts is due, apparently, to a decided difference in 
the interpretation of the lines ; ten Brink takes them literally 
assuming that thise other ladies means the nineteen heroines, and 
that the injunction of the poet is in eifect, " Remember in your 
Legend all the ladies who are named in the ballad. '^ Koch, it 
would seem, restricts the passage to no such literal sense, regard- 
ing it as an allusion to the whole company of faithful women, 
many of whom are properly included in the sense of the ballad, 
though they are not named in it. The poet is enjoined to have 
all of them in mind, and to glorify them all, so far as possible, in 
his Legend. 

In favor of this latter interpretation it may be remarked that 
the qualifying clause of the line, 

Ben in thy balade, if thou canst hem knowe^ 

has little meaning if the line is to be taken literally, and that the 
immediate context, 

I mene of hem that ben in thy knowinge 
For her ben twenty thousand mo sittinge 
Than thou knowest, 

certainly implies that the whole passage is meant to be taken as 
comprehensive and general. Moreover, ten Brink has failed to 
note that the real plan of the Legend is indicated in a passage 
which is common to both versions (G 538-540, F 549-551) : 



Chauaer^s Legend of Good Women, 31 

But now I charge thee, upon thy lyf, 
That in thy Legend thou make of this wyf, 
Whan thou hast othere smale mad before ; 

Any other plans beyond this, Chaucer must have regarded as 
subject to change at any time before the stories were actually 
written, and it does not seem clear that so long as this original 
injunction was obeyed he could have felt it binding upon him 
either to add to or to subtract from the text of the Prologue. 

It is pertinent now to inquire further what the real significance 
of the allusion in the Introduction to the Man of Laio's Prologue, 
is. We have seen that taken literally it presents difficulties which 
both Skeat and ten Brink pass over lightly. Why does Chaucer 
in speaking of his Legend of Good Women use a title which is not 
even hinted at in the work itself? Why does he call the rather 
slender collection of tales a large volume ? Their answer to the 
latter question is, apparently, because he meant to proceed at once 
to make the work fulfil the prophetic description which conceived 
it as already completed. Now Chaucer had already abandoned 
enough unfinished poems to make him aware of the danger of such 
borrowing from the future, and, moreover, he was at this time 
engaged upon a work which drew more heavily upon his interest 
and his powers than any other that he had ever undertaken. 
That he ever seriously intended to break in upon his work on the 
Tales to take up the Legend, with the promise of making it a 
large volume, is, on the face of it, highly improbable. 

Such an improbable conclusion is by no means forced upon us 
by the allusion of the Man of Law to Chaucer's Legend, for that 
allusion is admittedly inexact, both in naming the book and in 
describing its bulk, and we have no right to demand of it an exact 
enumeration of its contents. The description of the subject matter 
is, like the title, poetical ; and some of the names rest upon no other 
foundation than their mention in the ballad or their implied 
inclusion among the host of women who have been as " trewe as 
Steele." Chaucer has merely given himself free rein in writing on 
a favorite subject, and not being concerned about future students 
of his chronology, has taken no pains to confine his poetry within 
the limits of exact and literal description. 



32 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

A more determined effort to convict Chaucer of a change of 
plan from F to G, in this case with reference to the structure of 
the Prologue itself, is made by Lowes. ^ He says : " Structurally 
regarded, the B- version^ of the Prologue falls into two clearly 
distinguishable parts. The first includes 11. 1-196, and, without 
any hint whatever of a vision, is devoted to the panegyric of the 
daisy and the detailed account of a day spent in its honor in the 

mede The second part, including the last 383 lines of 

the version, is given up to the vision of the god of Love, the 
nineteen ladies, and Alceste." I^owes endeavors to show that the 
plan of the first part of F is imitated from Deschamps' Lay de 
Franchise, and that of the second, from Froissart^s Paradys 
d^ Amours, and argues that G adheres less closely to this derived 
plan, and may therefore be regarded as a revision made when the 
influence of the originals was no longer strongly felt. 

To this it should be answered first of all that the bifurcation 
of F at line 196 is entirely arbitrary. The two parts are indeed 
distinguishable, as are the actual and dream portions of the Duch- 
esse ; but they are not structurally distinct, nor is the plan faulty. 
In the first part of F according to this division, we have (1) an 
expression of the poet^s regard for old books, (11. 1-39) ; (2) an 
account of his habitual devotion in the spring time to the daisy, 
which wins him away from books, (11. 40-105) ; (3) the story of 
a specific day's devotion in an actual meadow, beginning early in 
the morning (11. 106-107), 

... In my herte I fele yit the fyr, 
That made me to ryse er hit wer day. 

To these words line 197 directly corresponds, marking the end 
of the same day : 

Whan that the sonne out of the south gan weste, 



Hoom to myn hous ful swiftly I me spedde 
To goon to reste. 

When the poet has fallen asleep in his " litel herber," the expe- 
riences of the day bear fruit in a dream which transports him at 

1 Lowes, p. 635. 2 ^ ^ y. 



Chaueer^s Legend of Good Women. 33 

once to the same flowery meadow. There he sees approaching him 
the god of Love and his queen, who is instantly seen to represent 
the daisy. Such is the connection between the two parts of F, a 
connection which, in my opinion, is entirely adequate both in 
thought and in form. 

Leaving aside for the moment, however, the question of the 
structure of F, we may next inquire to what extent the influence 
of the two French poems is more apparent in F than in G. The 
assertion that Chaucer has imitated the plan of the Lay de 
Franchise is based upon the following of its characteristics : 

(1) Its concentration of May-day observances on the daisy. 

(2) Its lack of a dream setting. 

(3) Its use of the personified daisy as the central figure. 

(4) The fact that she speaks not as mistress but as a favored 
subject. 

(5) Her individualization by dress. 

These characteristics, however, all belong to G as well as to 
F. It is true that no hint of a dream occurs in lines 1—196 of 
F, but that feature is represented in the latter part of F where we 
must look also for the third, fourth, and fifth of the list cited 
above. In G we have, up to the appearance of the god of Love, 
a brief description of the actual day, 8 lines (89-96), and a 
rather full description of the dream day, 40 lines (104—143). In 
F the relation is reversed, and there is a full account of the real 
day, 100 lines (103-202), and a very brief account, 3 lines 
(209-211) of the dream, into which the god of Love comes at 
once. The difference between the two versions, therefore, is not 
so great as might seem, for it is merely a difference in the treat- 
ment of the same material. The use of actual experiences to 
furnish a motive for a highly imaginative dream is so conventional 
that no importance need be attached to the presence or absence of 
a dream setting in the Lay. 

The really important question is this ; which of these arrange- 
ments is the better and therefore most likely to represent a revision ? 
I cannot but feel that in F as compared with G, two advantages 
are gained : an adequate occasion is provided for the very signifi- 
cant vision of the god of Love ; and the dream is reserved for the 



34 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

supernatural part of the poem, which is heightened by its contrast 
with the real. 

To justify his assertion of a close agreement between the second 
part of F and the Paradys d^ Amour s^ Lowes cites ^ the following 
parallels: "the offender found in Love's domain and charged with 
trespassing ; the further charge of heresy against Love's law, based 
on what the offender has said or sung ; the distinct recognition, on 
the part of the lady in royal habit, that her master owes mercy to 
the suppliant ; ignorance on the part of the offender that this lady 
is after all someone of whom he has already known ; the plea of 
repentance on the offender's part or on his behalf, and the specific 
glorification of the poet's lady, centering in a balade under the 
name or form of the daisy. That is to say," continues Lowes, 
"the framework, the cadre of the Paradys is in striking agree- 
ment with that of the second part of the B-version of the Pro- 
logueJ' 

Now all this is quite true, but it is also true that the framework 
of the Paradys agrees equally well with the plan of G. It is 
possible that Lowes considerably overestimates the direct influence 
of the French poem, but whatever that influence was there is no 
adequate ground for assigning more of it to one version than to 
the other. In the list quoted above the first feature that is not 
literally represented in G is the plea of repentance. The line 
(F 368), 

Or him repenteth utterly of this, 

is peculiar to F ; but it is to be noted that this is not a plea of 
repentance, either by the culprit or in his behalf, but one of several 
possible grounds of forgiveness recited by the queen. " He mighte 
doon hit," she says, inadvertantly, or because he was bidden, or 
he may be penitent. As a matter of fact such a plea is never 
made in either version, but the poet to the last insists that he 
meant no harm, and seeks to defend himself until silenced by the 
queen with the words, " Lat be thyn arguinge." 

What is apparently a more important variation in plan is to be 
found in the ballad, which in G is certainly less of "a specific 

^ Lowes, p. 652. 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 35 

glorification of the poet's lady'' than in F. I have already- 
shown, however, that the ballad in F is an Alcestis poem and not 
an imitation of Froissart's ballad, nor in itself associated with 
the daisy cult. What remains of the parallel is merely that there 
is in each a ballad recited in praise of a lady, not even in each the 
mistress of the singer. This is of course no parallel at all ; and 
moreover the fact of the insertion of a ballad into the poem is 
true of both versions. 

When we remember that although the assertion of direct influ- 
ence upon the plan of the Prologue was supported by an arbitrary 
division of F into two parts and the assigning of one French 
poem to each, it was found necessary to look in the second part ot 
F for three of the five parallels with the Lay de Franchise, we 
need not be surprised to find the results of such an assertion 
somewhat inconclusive. All the essential parallels are, in fact, 
found in G as well as in F, and the whole argument based upon 
the plan of the poems proves nothing more than a general rather 
than a specific influence of the French poems upon Chaucer, 
without the slightest evidence of the priority of F. 

There still remains to fortify the argument which I have just 
discussed, the series of verbal parallels, first pointed out by 
Lowes,^ with various French poems including the two in question. 
Lowes uses the F version only, however, and before we accept 
any conclusion as to the bearing of his comparison upon the 
question of the plan of G, it will be fair to put the G version in 
parallel columns with his citations from the two French poems 
with which we are concerned. 

G Prologue. Paradys d' Amours, 11. 1633-5. 

40 Now have I thereto this condicioun Cascune flour a par li son merite ; 

41 That of alle the floures in the mede, Mes je vous di, tant que pour me partie, 

42 Than love I most these floures whyte Sus toutes flours j'aime la margherite. 

and rede, lines 1621-2 

.... flours petites 

43 Swiche as men callen daysies in our Que nous appelons margerites. 

town, 

Lay de Franchise, U. 14, 27-30. 

44 To hem have I so greet affeccioun, Le premier jour de ce moisde plaisance. 
^ Lowes, p. 612. 



36 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

45 As I seyd erst, whan comen is the 

May, 

46 That in my bed ther daweth me no De mon hostel me pars au point du jour 

day 

47 That I nam up, and walking in the Prins et sousprins d'amoureuse dolour 

mede 

48 To seen these floures. . . . M'acheminay pensant par une plaine 

A la beaute de la tresdouce flour 
lines 44-50 

51 And whan the sonne ginneth for to Et au vespre, quant il (soleil) fait son 

weste, retour 

52 Than closeth hit, and draweth hit Ses fueilles clot, que nul ne la mal- 

to reste, maine 

53 So sore hit is afered of the night, En demonstrant qu'elle est vrai et cer- 

54 Til on the morwe, that hit is dayes taine 

light. Et qu'en clarte veult monstrer son atour; 

Mais en obscur tient si clos son demaine 
* Qu' il n' est mesdis n' autre chose villaine 

Qui nul temps puist en lui faire demour. 

The right-hand column above includes all the lines cited by 
Lowes from the Paradys and the Lay as parallel to the F version. 
The relation of these lines to G may now be considered in detail. 
Since lines 40-48 are identical, with one important exception/ in 
both versions, we may pass them at once. Lines 51 and 52, 
however, deserve closer examination, for they are much nearer to 
the French than are the corresponding lines of F. Those lines 
(F 60-63) are as follows : 

And whan that hit is eve, I renne blyve. 
As sone as ever the sonne ginneth weste. 
To seen this flour, how it wol go to reste, 
For fere of night, so hateth she derknesse ! 

Here the description is not concerned about the daisy at first 
hand, as in G and in the Lay, but about the poet, the point of 
view being changed. The verbal and structural parallels involved 
in the statement that, tohen the sun goes to the west the daisy closes, 
are consequently wanting. This seems to me remarkably like the 

^ The variation between these floures in G and this flour in F cannot be assigned to 
the French, because the allusion in Chaucer is purely literal, and there is, of 
course, no parallel in sense or structure. Its significance as an evidence of 
revision is considei'ed later. 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 37 

revision, with regard only to the context, of lines originally written 
under the influence of a foreign original/ 

Such a revision seems to me quite sufficient to account for the 
lines which immediately follow, and which may at first sight seem 
to be closer to the French than G 53 and 54. These are F 64, 65 : 

Hir chere is pleynly sprad in the brightness 
Of the sanne, for ther hit wol unclose. 

The only verbal parallel here is brightness — clarte, for hir chere 
and son atour are certainly not equivalent save in the sense that 
they are different figures of speech for the same literal original. 
Chaucer can hardly be said to have followed the sense of the 
French, unless it be in the juxtaposition of light and darkness, a 
feature which is fully represented in G 53, 54. If a French 
source were needed for these lines of F a better might be found in 
lines 41, 42 of the Lay, 

Car au souleil quant il rent sa luour 
S'euvre la flour, tant est humble et huraaine ; 

I believe, however, that an adequate source can be found nearer 
at hand in the line of G (54), 

Til on the morowe that hit is dayes light, 

and perhaps line 48, 

To seen these floures agein the sonne sprede. 

^ What may perhaps be fairly called another parallel, and one that is restricted 
to G, is found in line 58, 

As wel in winter as in somer newe. 

This should be compared with Paradys (T Amours, 11. 1636-8, 

Car en tons temps, plueve, gresille ou gelle, 
Soit la saisons ou fresque, ou laide, ou nette, 
Ceste flour est gracieuse et nouvelle. 

Lowes, who mentions the parallel, rejects it as not verbal ; but the fact that the 
word nouvelle is translated by newe in the same relation, together with the fact that 
Chaucer has apparently used the lines of the Paradys just preceding this, furnishes 
reasonable ground for thinking this direct borrowing. If it be so, we have another 
indication of priority in G. 



38 The Problem of the Tico Prologues to 

Chaucer has simply expanded the antithesis of G, night vs. dayes 

light, into 

For fere of night, so hateth she derknesse ! 
Hir chere is pleynly sprad in . . . brightnesse. 

It is such expansions that one expects in a revision. Had Chaucer 
written F as an original "with his eye on Deschamps/' these lines 
(64 and 65) would have been the first in which he described the 
daisy directly, as Deschamps does throughout, and not from the 
point of view of the poet. Here, if anywhere, we should have 
expected unmistakable evidences of borrowing ; yet it is here 
that we find them least convincing. 

Unless I greatly misjudge the evidence submitted above, the 
appeal to verbal parallels to prove that the plan of F, and not 
that of G, was based on the Paradys d^ Amours and the Lay de 
Franchise not only does not strengthen the argument, but posi- 
tively weakens it. It does seem probable that Chaucer drew upon 
those poems for certain features of the Prologue ; but neither in 
that probability nor in any other consideration that has been 
brought to my notice, do I find any evidence that invalidates the 
priority of G. 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 39 



B. THE TWO VERSIONS COMPARED IN DETAIL. 



In order to test the conclusions reached by an examination of 
the larger variations between the Prologues, and at the same time 
to find surer ground for an opinion as to their order, a detailed 
comparison of variants, line by line, is next undertaken. The 
following statistics will serve to give a clearer idea of the nature 
of these variants : 

Lines in G 545 

Lines in F 579 

Lines common to G and F 280 

Lines partly identical in both 165 

Lines peculiar to G 100 

Lines peculiar to F 134 

It is to be noted that of the 100 lines peculiar to G 52, or 
more than half, occur in a single passage, the reproof of the god 
of Love ; whereas these additions to the common stock which are 
peculiar to F are not only more numerous but also more evenly 
distributed. Besides the three classes of minor variants already 
mentioned, namely, lines peculiar to one version, or to the other, 
or partly identical in both, there is a fourth class consisting of 
lines which, though common to both versions, have been trans- 
posed in the course of revision to a new context. Of the 545 
lines of G 55 are reproduced, either wholly or in part, in F with 
a different relation to the plan of the Prologue. Taking advan- 
tage of the presumption already established in favor of F, I shall 
discuss, from the point of view of G as an original, first, the lines 
differently placed in the two versions ; second, the lines peculiar 
to G and those which displace them in F ; third, the lines pecu- 
liar to F which have not been otherwise noticed ; and finally, the 
lines which are partly identical in both. 



40 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

I. Lines Transposed in the Revision. 
G 55-58. 

This dayeseye, of alle floures flour, 
Fulfild of vertu and of alle honour, 
And ever y-lyke fair and fresh of hewe, 
As wel in winter as in somer newe. 

This description of the daisy immediately follows the account 
of the flower's going to rest, and is concluded in G by the line, 

Fain wolde I preisen, if I coude aright ; 

In F the same lines precede the going to rest, and are used not 
as in G merely as a description of the flower which the poet would 
gladly praise, but as a ground for the reverential devotion which 
he pays to it. With their context they appear in F as follows : 

F 51-56 So glad am I whan that I have presence 
Of hit (to) doon al maner reverence, 
As she, that is of alle floures flour, 
Fulfilled of al vertu and honour, 
And ever y-lyke fair, and fresh of hewe; 
And Hove hit, and ever y-lyke newe, — 

Obviously the passage, as it is placed in F, lends itself readily 
to interpretation as an allegorical compliment to a lady typified by 
the flower, whereas in G it is disconnected from what precedes it, 
and provides a motive only for the poet's complaint of inability to 
praise the daisy fittingly. The implication of the passage in F 
with the context, which contains numerous lines peculiar to that 
version, and its service as a motive for what precedes and as a logical 
transition to the daisy's good night, as compared with the plain 
conventionality of its use in G, make it hard to believe that in this 
case the process of revision could be from F to G. 

G 71-80. 

A second transposed passage is G 71—80, ten lines which make 
up Chaucer's disavowal of partisanship in the Flower and the Leaf 
controversy. These ten lines appear in F condensed into nine and 
transposed to 188-196. In G the passage with its immediate 
context reads : 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 41 

G 68-80 I hope that they wil nat ben evel apayd, 
Sith hit is seid in foi'thering and honour 
Of hem that either serven leef or flour. 
For trusteth wel, I ne have nat undertake 
As of the leef, ageyn the flour to make ; 
Ne of the flour to make, ageyn the leef, 
No more than of the corn ageyn the sheef. 
For, as to me, is leefer noon ne lother ; 
I am with-holde yit with never nother. 
I not who serveth leef, ne who the flour ; 
That nis nothing the entent of my labour. 
For this werk is al of another tunne. 
Of olde story, er swich stryf was begunne. 

In F the couplet corresponding to G 69-70 is made to serve 
another purpose, as follows : 

F 81-83 Sin that ye see I do hit in the honour 
Of love, and eek in service of the flour. 
Whom that I serve as I have wit or might. 

That is, it is made to introduce the ardent invocation of the daisy 
which occupies 11. 83-96 of F, and which is wholly wanting in G. 
After this invocation come the four lines beginning, 

But wherefor that I spak, to give credence — 

which are in the main common to both versions, though differently 
employed; next comes the description of the actual May scene, 
which is much fuller in F than in G ; and finally, the disavowal 
introduced as follows : 



F 186-196 I pray to god that faire mot she falle, ) 

And all that loven floures, for hir sake ! 
But natheles, ne wene nat that I make 
In preysing of the flour agayn the leef 
No more than of the corn agayn the sheef. 
For as to me nis lever noon ne lother. 
I nam with-holden yit with never nother ; 
Ne I not who serveth leef, ne who the flour ; 
Wel brouken they hir service or labour ; 
For this thing is al of another tonne. 
Of olde story, er swich thing was be-gonne. 



42 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

The changes that have beeu made within these lines will be dis- 
cussed in another chapter. We are concerned here only with the 
evidence that may be found in their transposition. The diiference 
between the two Prologues in that regard may be illustrated as 
follows ; 

In G In F 

The apology to earlier writers. The apology to earlier writers. 

The disavowal of partisanship. The invocation of the daisy. 

The allusion to belief in old books. The allusion to belief in old books. 

The actual May scene. The actual May scene (enlarged). 

The poet's return and his slumber in the The disavowal of partisanship. 

arbor. 
The dream May scene. The poet's return and his slumber in the 

arbor. 
The coming of the god of Love. The dream scene and the coming of the 

god of Love. 

Other considerations being equal, it is perhaps more probable 
that the reviser removed a passage to a later point in order to 
make room for something new than that he did the converse. 
There are other considerations, however, which weigh in favor of 
the same conclusion. In G the disavowal is introduced by the 
assertion that the poem is written in honor of them " that either 
serven leef or flour.'^ In F that first allusion to the allegorical 
controversy appears as part of a fervent appeal to lovers " that 
can make of sentement " to help whether they be with the leaf or 
with the flower. All other reference to the strife of flower and 
leaf is deferred until Chaucer^ s praise of the daisy has, in F 
183—186, reached its climax, a climax which it never does reach 
in G, when the disavowal with its, " But natheles,'^ comes in 
most appropriately. Chaucer says in effect : ^Although I do praise 
the daisy thus fervently, it must not be assumed on that account 
that I am a partisan in the Flower and Leaf controversy.' The 
disavowal is thus logically related to the main purpose of F, 
whereas in G it is merely incidental to an apology to the earlier 
poets after whom Chaucer comes '' glening here and there.'' It 
is much easier to believe, therefore, that it was displaced from its 
position in G in order to make way for the invocation, which is 
inserted in accordance with a change of purpose, and that it was 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 43 

put after the poet's actual devout celebration of the daisy because 
that arrangement seemed to him a better one, than it is to believe 
the converse process. 

G 93-106. 

Another transposition appears in the account of the poet's return 
home in the evening, his slumber in the arbor, and his dream, 
which are deferred in F until after the description of the May 
scene and are found in lines 197-211. This produces an im- 
portant change in the plan of the poem. In each version there 
are two May-day experiences, one real, the other dreamed. In G 
the real May-day is briefly described in four lines, 89-92, which 
are followed by an account of the home-coming and the sleep in 
the arbor, in the course of which the poet dreams of a May -day in 
the meadow, and of the appearance of the god of Love. In F the 
real May-day is very luUy described, — much more fully than the 
dream scene in G, — and is followed by a dream scene in which the 
god of Love at once appears with his retinue. 

This transfer of the description of the spring-time scene from 
dream to reality has been regarded as an improvement by both 
Skeat^ and Legouis.^ Binz, in his review of Legouis,^ though he 
admits the superiority of the F version in certain respects, is dis- 
posed to doubt it here. He believes that the wonderful vision of 
the god of Love is better prepared for in G than in F, where it is 
too abruptly introduced. This question, which has already been 
touched on in a preceding chapter, is too much a matter of sub- 
jective opinion to be settled by an appeal to facts ; but it cannot 
be denied that the description in F is fuller and richer than in G, 
that it is, as Legouis says, the picture of a real scene, and that 
there is a gain in concreteness and life in making it an actual expe- 
rience. Moreover, in my opinion, the account of the poet's all- 
day-long devotion to the daisy, which is the climax of the descrip- 
tion, provides a fully adequate motive for the immediate appear- 
ance in his dream of the personified daisy, Alcestis, ^^with florouns 
smale, ... for al the world right as a dayesye." I have no 

* Oxford Chaucer, m, xviii. * Legouis, p. 62. 

^ Anglia, Beiblatt, XI, 234 f. 



44 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

hesitation^ therefore, in regarding this transposition also as an 
after-thought of the poet's which has resulted in a more pictur- 
esque as well as a more consistent and symmetrical poem in the F 
version. 

G 338-339. 

The last transposition to be noticed affects two lines of G which 
are moved back in F. The couplet, 

This man to you may wrongly been accused, 
Ther as by right him oghte been excused, 

follows in G the plea of Alcestis based on the presence of false 
accusers in the court of Love, which is included in lines 328—337. 
In F these two lines, with two new ones, precede this passage 
instead of following it, and take the place of four lines omitted in 
F. Accordingly, in F we read, '• 

F 348-352 And if ye nere a god, that knowen al, 

Than might hit be, as I you tellen shal ; 

This man to yow may falsely been accused 
Thereat by right him oghte been excused^ 
For in your court is many a losengour, 

and so on. The value of the lines peculiar to the two versions 
will be discussed later. It is quite obvious, I think, that the arrange- 
ment of G, in which the couplet follows the allusion to false 
accusers without any grammatical connection with it, has been 
improved in F by transposing the couplet so that it precedes the 
allusion and is bound to it by a causal connective. 

Without pushing the argument too far, it can be fairly said that 
every change of lines from one position in G to another in F can 
be accounted for as improvements, on the hypothesis of a revision 
proceeding from G to F, inspired by one or both of two motives, 
namely, the improvement of the poem, and the celebration of the 
lady who is symbolized by the daisy. If we suppose the revision 
to have been from F to G, we must assume that Chaucer weak- 
ened his poem in order to accomplish some object important 
enough to override other considerations, an assumption for which 
no external evidence exists. 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 45 



II. Lines Peculiar to the G-Yeesion. 

Of the 545 lines of the Prologue in G 100 are not reproduced 
either wholly or in part in F. F, however, is longer by 34 lines 
than G, and contains 134 lines not found in G. Lines which 
stand alone in either version are significant as to the nature of the 
revision, for they must either have been deliberately rejected or 
deliberately inserted. I shall first discuss lines peculiar to G, 
taking up F only when it is evident that one passage has dis- 
placed another. 

G 50. 

44-50 To hem have I so greet affecciouu, 

As I seyde erst, whan comen is the May, 
That in my bed ther daweth me no day 
That I nam up, and walking in the mede 
To seen these floures agein the sonne sprede, 
Whan hit upriseth by the morwe shene, 
^The longe day, thus walking in the grene.^ 

Line 50 is the last of a sentence, and is so loosely connected 
with what precedes it that it can be dropped out with no violence 
to the structure. The line does add something to the thought but 
nothing that is absolutely essential to it. One might even think 
of it as having been written chiefly for the sake of completing the 
couplet. Hence it is not at all such a line as would be naturally 
added in a revision. On the other hand, it is precisely such a line 
as could be readily dropped out to make way for others. 

The lines which, as I believe, have taken its place read with 
their context as follows. 

F 49-52 Whan hit upryseth erly by the morwe ; 

*That blisful sighte sqftneth al my sorive, 
*So glad am I whan that 1 have presence 
*0f hit, to doon al maner reverence. 

If we suppose that F represents an earlier form we must explain 
why these three lines were rejected to make room for the prosaic 
and unnecessary line which corresponds to them in G. Clearly 

^ The asterisk is used in accordance with the system of Skeat to indicate lines 
which occur in one version only. 



46 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

the lines are a part of the poet's glorification of the Queen, but 
that is clear to us only when the whole Prologue is considered. 
With other more obvious allusions to the Queen removed, these 
lines might have been left untouched. Neither ten Brink's hypo- 
theses, therefore, nor Koeppel's, affords us a satisfactory motive 
for Chaucer's changing F 49-52 to G 50. The enrichment and 
improvement of the text is ground enough for believing that he 
did substitute F 49-52 for G 50. 

G54. 

51-54 And whan the sonne ginneth for to weste, 
Than closeth hit, and draweth hit to reste, 
So sone hit is afered of the night, — 
*Til on the morwe, that hit is dayes light. 

Line 54, like line 50 above, is the last line of a sentence and is 
not very essential to the thought. It can, therefore, be easily 
dropped out in revision. This passage of four lines appears in F 
without it, introduced by a new line which, in a sense, takes its 
place. 

F 60-64 *And whan that hit is eve, I renne blyve. 
As sone as ever the sonne ginneth weste, 
To seen this flour, how it wol go to reste. 
For fere of night, so hateth she derknesse ! 

The starred line in F introduces the passage and links it to the 
context by telling of the interest of the poet in the daisy's going 
to rest. It is a most essential line and the least likely to be sac- 
rificed in a revision undertaken to improve the poem. As a whole 
the passage in F is more compact and vigorous. The rather 
awkward parenthesis of line G 53 is avoided. The sudden change 
of number from "to seen these flour es^^ in 1. 48 to "Than closeth 
hit^^ in 1. 52, and the consequent liability of confusion of the 
antecedents of hit in 1. 49, which refers to the sun, and hit used 
three times in 52 and 53 to refer to the daisy are other faults in 
G removed by the revision. 

G60. 

55-60 This dayesye, of alle floures flour, 
Fulfild of vertu and of alle honour. 
And ever y-lyke fair and fresh of hewe. 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women, 47 

As wel in winter as in somer newe, 
Fain wolde I preisen if I coude aright ; 
*But wo is me, hit lyth not in my might ! 

We have seen above that lines 55-58 of this passage are trans- 
posed in F to a different context. This transposition of course 
made it necessary to recast lines 59 and 60, which depend gram- 
matically on what precedes them. Chaucer did this, I believe, 
as follows : 

F 64-67 *Hir chere is pleynly sprad in the brightnesse 
*0f the Sonne, for ther hit wol unclose. 
* Alias ! that I ne had English, ryme or prose, 
Suffisant this flour to preyse aright ! 

After the allusion to the daisy's fear of darkness (1. 63), he has 
inserted two new lines describing her love of light, and then the 
sprightly interjection in which he laments his inability to praise 
her worthily. This interjection seems to me much better than the 
colder and more formal " Fain wolde I preisen '^ of G, and the 
changes throughout the passage suggest decidedly a revision of G 
to produce F. 

Turning from the consideration of single lines we may next 
notice the general eifect of the changes just discussed. Lowes ^ 
endeavors to show that G 48—60 are superior in structure to the 
corresponding lines of F because they follow the time order more 
closely, and are the result of changing a " loosely-linked cento into 
a compact close-knit unit." 

With his sweeping judgment in their favor, I cannot at all 
agree. Judged by his own somewhat arbitrary standard of chron- 
ological sequence, F is quite as consistent as G, and to my mind 
more coherent. In F we have two hints of the time of day, each 
from the point of view of the poet. In lines 46-48, the morning, 

. . . ther daweth me no day 
That I nam up and walking in the mede 
To seen this flour agein the sonne sprede : 

and in lines 60-61, the evening, 

And whan that hit is eve, I renne blyve, 
As sone as ever the sonne ginneth weste 
To seen this flour, how it wol go to reste. 

1 Lowes, p. 659 ff. 



48 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

Lines 64-65, 

Hir chere is pleynly sprad in the brightnesse 
Of the Sonne, for ther hit wol unclose, 

are not, as Lowes says, a return to the day again, — though he 
justifies such a return in G 54 as " completing the circle of the 
twenty-four hours,'' — but merely a counter statement of the daisy's 
love of light in contrast with her fear of darkness described in the 
preceding line. No more logical transition is needed, and there 
is, as we have seen, no necessity for making Deschamps respons- 
ible for the appearance of the lines at this point. 

The first half of the description is equally coherent. After 
telling us, as also in G, the fact that he is up early in the morning 
to see the daisy, he continues. 

That blisful sight softneth all my sorwe, 

and goes on to explain and justify this early morning devotion, 
which in G is merely stated as a fact. The whole passage (lines 
50—59) is a consistent elaboration of this thought, and all belongs 
by structure as well as by logical connection with what precedes it. 
The general description of the daisy in G consists of three 
distinct sentences, all abruptly ended and without graceful transi- 
tions, and lacks moreover some ten lines of F the omission of 
which is not accounted for. 

G 85-88. 

81-88 But wherfor that I spak, to yeve credence 
To bokes olde and doon hem reverence, 
Is for men shulde autoritees beleve, 
Thereas ther lyth non other assay by preve. 
*For myn intent is, or I fro yowfare, 
*The naked text in English to declare 
*0f many a story, or elles of many a geste, 
^As autours seyn ; leveth hem if yow leste ! 

The straightforward and conventional character of these lines 
has been already noticed. They constitute the climax of a sort of 
prologue to the Prologue, and very properly state the purpose of 
the poem. The old book and the dream are a favorite convention 
of Chaucer's for introducing a poem. Here he has used them to 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 49 

introduce and justify a collection of old stories. There is nothing 
in these lines to indicate that the poet had more than a single 
purpose as he wrote them, and nothing whatever to justify us in 
thinking that they represent a second thought. 
The corresponding passage in F is quite different. 

F 97-102 But wherfor that I spak, to give credence 
To olde stories, and doon hem reverence, 
And that men mosten more thing beleve 
Then men may seen at eye or elles preve ? 
^That shall I seyn, whan that I see my tyme; 
*I may not al at ones speke in ryme. 

These lines, particularly the last couplet, do look very much 
like a second thought. Certainly the poet would be much more 
likely to half-apologize for not doing something that he had done 
in the earlier draft, than to make such an apology a part of a first 
version. It is easy to imagine the mental process by which G 
was changed into F, and not at all easy to imagine the converse. 
Moreover F, in this case, as often, shows the better art. Chaucer 
intends later to represent himself as directed by Alcestis to write 
as penance for his offenses against love, the stories of faithful 
women, gathering his material from history. There is no reason 
why he should anticipate this poetical device by telling us in the 
beginning of the Prologue, and that in a prosaic and conventional 
manner, precisely what he is going to do. 

G91. 

90-91 And I had romed al the someres day, 

^The grene medew. of which that I yoiv tolde, 

This single starred line needs no special comment. It will be 
seen presently that the whole passage of which it is a part is 
displaced in F by much livelier and fuller description of the scene. 

G 105 and 107. 

105-108 ^And that I romed in that same gyse, 

To seen that flour, as ye han herd devyse. 
"^Fair was this medew, as thoughte me overal ; 
With floures swote enbrowded was it al. 

In F the poet does not roam either in reality or in dream ; he 



50 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

kneels at daybreak beside the daisy to see it open its petals to the 
sunlight. Lines 107-108 are represented in F by, 

— smale, softe, swote gras 
F 118-122 That was with floures swote enbrouded al, 
*0f swich swetnesse and swich odour over-al, 
That, for to speke of gomme, or herbe, or tree, 
Comparisoun may noon y-maked be ; 

The line peculiar to G (1. 107) is a padded line, general in its 
description, and the first line of the sentence. Line 120 in F, 
which has the same rime-word, is closely involved in the structure, 
is specific in its description, and contains no superfluous words. 

G 138-143. 

*So ech of hem {^doth wel] to creature. 
*This song to herkne I dide al myn entente, 
*Foi^-why Imette 'Iwiste what they mente. 
*Til at the laste a larke song above : 
^^I see ' quod she, ' the mighty god of love ! 
^Lo / yond he cometh, I see his wings sprede ! ' 

This is merely a transition passage by means of which we get 
on rapidly to the coming of the god of Love. The introduction 
of the lark to announce his appearance is an awkward convention, 
a reminiscence apparently of the Parliament of Briddes, in which 
the birds allegorically represent the personages whom the poem 
celebrates. Here they are merely incidental, and nowhere else in 
the G-version are they represented as speaking. The allusion to 
his spreading wings is also incongruous, for it is hard to conceive 
him at one moment as flying through the air and the next as 
walking beside his queen attended by a multitude of ladies. 

Certainly, as he is described in this passage, the god of Love is 
ill-adapted to the allegorical representation of the king of Eng- 
land. In F, in which the poet sees the royal pair, 

from a-fer com walking in the mede, 

the description besides being more consistent with itself is more 
appropriate to an allegorical interpretation. 

G 161-164. 

158-164 Y-clothed was this mighty god of love 
Of silk , y-brouded f ul of grene greves ; 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 51 

A garlond on his heed of rose-leves 
^Steked al mth lilie floures newe ; 
*But of his face I can not seyn the hewe. 
For sekirly his face shoon so brighte, 
^That with the gleem a-stoned was the sighte ; 

The three starred lines are wanting in F, where the rose-leves 
are transferred from the garland to the embroidery of Love's silken 
robe, and their place on his head is taken by a crown. The lines 
peculiar to F are, 

F 228-231 . . . —A fret of rede rose-leves, 

■^jTAe fresshest sin the world was first bigonne. 
^His gilte heer was corouned with a sonne, 
^Instede of gold, for hevinesse and wighte ; 

That the change from a fresh garland of roses and lilies to a 
glittering crown points to a change in the allegory has already 
been noted by Legouis/ approved by Koch/ and made still more 
of by Bilderbeck.^ It is another one of numerous indications that 
F is an occasional poem and G is not. 

The four lines in G which describe the brightness of Love's 
face (11. 162-5) are condensed into two in F, an undeniable 
improvement and an indication of revision from G to F. They 
read in F, 

F 232 Therewith me thoughte his face shoon so brighte 
That wel unnethes mighte I him beholde ; 

G 199-202. 

'^And after that they wenten in compas, 
^Daunsinge aboute this flour an esy pas, 
*And songen, as it were in carol-wyse, 
^This balade, which that I shal yow devyse. 

Since the ballad in F is not sung by the women, but is recited 
by the poet himself, these lines will not serve as an introduction 
to it. In F, consequently, their place is taken by the couplet, 

*And therfor may I seyn, as thinketh me 
*This song in preysing of my lady f re 



^Legouis, p. 68. 

^ Englische Studien, xxx, 457. 

3 Bilderbeck, p. 85 f. 



52 The Problem of the Tino Prologues to 

The significance of the variations in the use and the form of 

ballad have been discussed fully in another chapter. It may be 

noted here that though the dance is wanting in F, the song is 
preserved in the following lines not found in G, 

And kneled down — 
F 295-299 ^And songen with o rois, ^Hele and honour 
*To trouthe of woman hede, and to this flour 
^That berth our alder pry s infiguringe! 
^Sir whyte coroun berth the witnessinge.^ 

The homage of the attendant ladies is not lost, therefore, though 
their ballad has been transferred to the poet because of a changed 
purpose in the poem. 

The next starred line in G is 

225 *Upon the softe and swote grene gras, 

a line which may have been omitted in F because the grass had 
already been so described in the description of the meadow (F 1. 1 1 8), 

Upon the stnale softe swote gras, 

G247. 

'For thou,' quod he, 'art therto nothing able. 
*My servaunts been alle wyse and honourable, 
Thou art my mortal fo, and me warreyest.' 

These lines appear in F as follows : 

F 320-322 ' For thou,' quod he, ' art ther-to nothing able. 
^Hit is my relik, digne and delytable, 
And thou my fo, and al my folk werreyest.' 

The sense is better in F than in G, for the three lines 246, 247, 
and 248 are all more or less disconnected, and the transitions in 
sense are abrupt. There is a logical connection in thought in F 
between lines 320 and 321 which is wanting in G, and both the 
sense and the structure of the passage are improved by the anti- 
theses of hit and thou. The change has the further effect of 
increasing the prominence of the daisy. 

G 258-64. 

255-66 Thou hast translated the Romauns of the Rose, 
That is an heresye ageyns my lawe. 
And makest wyse folk fro me withdrawe. 
*And thinkest in thy vdt, tbM isful cool, 



Chaucet^s Legend of Good Women. 53 

^'That he nis but a verray proprefool 

^That loveth paramours, to harde and hote. 

* Wei wot I tlier-hy thou beginnest dote 

^As oldefoles, whan hir spirit fayleth ; 

Than blame they folk, and wite not what hem ayleth. 

"^Hast thou nat mad in English eek the book 

How that Crisseyde Troilus forsook, 

In shewinge how that wemen han don mis ? 

The lines in this passage which are peculiar to G constitute 
ten Brink's strongest evidence that G is a revised and later form. 
He notes ^ that it is one of three allusions to old age which are 
wanting in F. The others are, 

G 315 As othere oldefoles many a day, 

which appears in F as, 

F 337 As other lorecches han doon many a day ; 

and the third, upon which ten Brink does not depend in his 
argument, 

G 400-401 *Whyl he was yong, he kepte your estat ; 
*I not wher he be now a renegat, 

a couplet which is wholly wanting in F. Lines 106 and 107 of F, 

■'^That in my herte I fele, yit the fyr 
*That made me to ryse er hit wer day — 

which Furnivall ^ takes to be an interesting allusion to Chaucer's 
age, ten Brink regards as indicating nothing more than an interval 
of time between the writing of the Prologue and the incident which 
it describes. When it is remembered that Chaucer has already ^ 
told us that his*May-day rambles are habitual, it is fair to assume 
that his eagerness to see the daisy open to the sunshine on this 
occasion was no unusual thing. The " fyr " that impelled him 
was, therefore, the fire of youth and no isolated and remarkable 
impulse to which he could allude so specifically after a short 
interval. Although these lines are not the words of a man in his 
dotage, they, nevertheless, smack too strongly of the reminiscence 

^ Englische Stvdien, xvii, 14, n. 1. 

^ Trial Forewords, p. 105. 

^ Lines 36-39 of both versions. 



64 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

of middle-age to be lightly brushed aside as having no reference 
whatever to a lapse of time. 

Though it be granted, however, that the F version is not 
wholly without allusion to Chaucer's age, it cannot be denied that 
two distinct allusions to the doting folly of men who are no longer 
lovers are consistently wanting in F.^ If these allusions are to be 
taken as serious autobiographical hints, there is some justice in 
ten Brink's argument that the version which contains them is, on 
the face of it, likely to be the earlier. 

There is, however, nothing that Avarrants us in taking them 
so seriously. We might as well take literally Chaucer's self- 
depreciation in F 414, 

'' Al be hit that he can nat wel endyte." 

as additional proof, showing that he wrote F in his youth while 
conscious of his immaturity ; or in G 29, 

'' But as for me though that my wit be lyte," 

as another allusion to dotage. For some light on Chaucer's sober 
earnestness when he speaks of himself as a lover, compare his 
disclaimer in the Parliament, 11. 889-890, 

' ' For al be that I knowe not love in dede 
Ne wot how that he quyteth folk her hyre," 

with his hint at an eight-year-long love-sickness in the Duchessey 
11. 36-40. Chaucer is not to be held strictly to account for every- 
thing that he says about himself, for he is never half so serious as 
his critics. 

Moreover, even if we do allow an element of autobiography 
in these allusions, it is hard to see why, since they are both rela- 
tive and apply to Chaucer only as a lover, they may not as well 
be dated 1385 as 1393. ten Brink remarks that Chaucer does 
not allude to his old age in poems earlier than the Legend^ and 
that he does so freely in later ones, namely, Scogan and the 
Compleynt of Venus. 

^ ten Brink, p. 14 : Wir stehen daher vor der bezeichnenden thatsache, dass Gg. 
eine zweimalige anspielung auf Chaucer's alter (und altersschwache) enthalt, die 
Vulgata keine einzige. 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 65 

Now it is generally agreed ^ that the Envoy to Scogan was proba- 
bly written in 1393, the very year to which ten Brink assigns 
Prologue F. Chaucer was then probably not more than fifty-three 
years of age. In the Envoy he is writing a personal poem 
addressed to a friend, and the situation is therefore different 
from that of the Legend of Good Women. Still, if Chaucer can 
speak of himself as a gray-beard, too old to wake his muse again, 
when he is a little over fifty, he might easily be old enough at 
forty-five to be accused of lack of sympathy with lovers. The 
truth is that Scogan is jest and raillery from beginning to end, 
addressed to a man twenty years ^ his junior; and little of value 
as to Chaucer's real feeling is to be inferred from it. The Envoy 
to the Compleynt of Venus, which may have been written in 1394,^ 
serves to illustrate further the spirit in which such allusions are 
made. In it Chaucer apologises for the work : 

''For eld, that in my spirit dulleth me, 
Hath of endyting al the soteltee 
Wei ny bereft out of my remembraunce," 

declaring that he cannot find rimes enough to follow Granson 
word by w^ord, when he has actually outdone his original and 
made his translation an example of the highest skill in riming. 
The allusion is like the others purely jocular. 

It still remains to be explained why, if these allusions to age 
are not serious enough to be taken as sufficient evidence for dating 
the poem, they are to be found only in the version which I regard 
on other grounds as the earlier. We have already seen that F is 
formally dedicated to the Queen, and that it is marked by a tone 
of courtliness consistent with that dedication and largely wanting in 
G. It seems to me not at all unlikely that all three of the passages 
mentioned by ten Brink were omitted in the course of the revision, 
because of their unnecessary personal bearing and their possible 
tendency toward coarseness. I am aware that I may in turn be 
accused of pushing the sense of these passages too far when I 

^ Koch, Chronology of Chaucer'' s Writings, p. 70, and note. 
'^Cf. Kittredge in Harvard Studies in Philol. and Lit., i, 116 ff. 
*Koch, Chronology of Chaucer's Writings, p. 72, n. 



56 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

speak of their showing a tendency toward coarseness ; but when I 
recall the sixteenth and seventeenth statutes of the Court of Love,^ 
and remember the Ovidian origin of so much of the romantic 
tradition, I do not wonder that even in the fourteenth century 
Chaucer might have felt it to be in better taste to omit them from 
a poem dedicated to the queen whose marriage he had already 
celebrated in the Parliament. 

G 267-312. 

The long reproof of the god of Love beginning 

267 But natheles, answere me now to this, 
and ending, 

311-312 But yit I sey, what eyleth thee to wryte 
The draf of stories, and forgo the corn ? 

is wholly wanting in F. The substance of the reproof is that 
Chaucer has neglected the stories of faithful women, of which he 
had an abundance in liis books, and has preferred to write of the 
perfidy of Cressida. 

As this is the most considerable passage peculiar to G, it has 
naturally provoked numerous conjectures. Skeat^ at first found 
it hard to understand w^hy Chaucer should here appeal to works 
against women ; but afterward ^ modified his opinion, ten Brink 
based upon the mention of such books his most cogent argument 
for the later date of G. ^^ These books,^' he said,* "are such as, 
so far as one can see, Chaucer knew only slightly or not at all 
during his second period, though they play a very significant role 
in his third period.^^ Legouis,^ insisting upon Chaucer's right to 
be judged first of all as a literary artist, argues that this tirade 
of the god of Love, including 11. 258-264, is out of keeping with 
the character of the god, whom it transforms into a verbose 

^Skeat's Chaucerian and Other Pieces, p. 421 f. Cf. lines 435-469. This poem 
is, of course, non-Chaucerian and later than the Legend of Good Women, but it 
undoubtedly goes back to an older tradition quite familiar to Chaucer. 

^ Legend of Good Women (1889), p. xi. 

^ Oxford Chaucer, III, p. 302, n. 

^ Englische Studien, xvii, 15. 

^Legouis, p. 61. 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 57 

pedant. Hence, Legouis would say these passages were omitted 
in the revision. 

Whatever may be said of the literary merit of the lines, it 
must be admitted, as Koeppel has pointed out,^ that the books 
mentioned by the god of Love are not inappropriate here, for 
even Jerome concedes some goodness to women, ten Brink's 
chronological argument based upon them is at first sight convinc- 
ing, but demands closer scrutiny. 

The lines in which authors of stories about good women are 
named are as follows : 

280-281 *What seith Valerie, Titus, or Claudian? 
■^What seith lerome ageyns lovinian ? 

The next twenty-four lines are a description of two chapters of 
Jerome against Jovinian. Then follows, 

305-307 ^What seith also the epistels of Ovyde 
*0f trewe wyves, and of hir labour ? 
■^What Vincent, in his Storial Mirour ? 

Six authors are here mentioned by name. Let us examine 
each in turn and see if any significance as to the chronology of 
the two Prologues can be found in them. 

Valerie, I take to be Valerius Maximus,^ whom Chaucer twice ^ 
mentions by name as one of his authorities for classical stories. 
Professor Bright has shown ^ that the otherwise inexplicable 
Eleanor of the House of Fame (1. 516) refers to Hamilcar, the 
account of whose dream Chaucer got from Valerius Maximus. 

^Anglia, xiii, 174 ff. 

^ Skeat is certainly wrong in supposing that the reference is to Walter Mapes' 
Valerius ad Rufinum. See Lounsbury, Chaucer Studies, ii, 276, and Koppel, 
Anglia, xiii, p. 182. As Koppel intimates, the epistle of Valerius is quite inap- 
propriate as a source of stories about true women, and Valerius Maximus is not. 
In his Factorum et didorum Memorabilum, Lib. iv, cap. vi, 1, the story of Alcestis 
is briefly told along with those of other women faithful in love. In Lib. ii, cap. 
iv, 14, Valerius extravagantly praises the devotion of the Hindoo widows, who 
strive for the honor of cremation upon the pyre of the dead husband, and in other 
passages, ii, i, 3 ; ii, ii, 8 ; and iii, ii, 9, narrates incidents showing the virtue 
and the courage of women. 

3 In the Monk's Tale, B 3910, and in the Wife of Bath's Tale, D, 1165. 

* Modem Language Notes, ix, 241. 



58 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

We may, therefore, be certain that Chaucer knew Valerius before 
he wrote either version of the Prologue, and the mention of Valerie 
has no bearing whatever on the problem of their relation to each 
other. 

Livy, whether Chaucer actually used his works or not, is men- 
tioned in the Book of the Duchesse (1. 1084) and Claudian, not 
to multiply evidence, in the House of Fame (1. 449). We come 
next to Jerome ageyns Jovinian, the work upon which particularly 
ten Brink bases his argument. This is evidently the book which 
Chaucer has especially in mind in the tirade of the god of Love, 
for fully half of that passage is a discussion of the contents of two 
chapters of Jerome's work. It is quite true that the same book 
is very extensively used in the Wife of Bath's Prologue (D 674 ff.) 
and in the Franklin's Tale (F 1367-1456) ; but it does not neces- 
sarily follow that the three allusions to the work are therefore to 
be assigned to the same date, or even to the same period in 
Chaucer's life. Positive evidence that Chaucer knew Jerome's 
treatise before he wrote either version is afforded by his mention 
of Marcia Catoun in both forms of the ballad (G 206, F 252). 
The reference here is, as Lounsbury points out,^ to the daughter 
of Cato, the account of whose refusal to marry a second time is 
given in Jerome.^ The fact that in the passage from which this 
account of Marcia Catoun is taken (the end of chapter 45 and the 
beginning of 46) Alcestis, Penelope, Laodamia, and Lucretia are 
also mentioned as heroic wives, may even imply that Chaucer had 
Jerome before him when he wrote the ballad, and derived some 
of his inspiration from him. 

The argument that Chaucer did not know a work at the time 
of writing a certain poem, based solely on the fact that he appar- 
ently made no use of it, is in itself of doubtful force. In this case 
even that argument cannot apply, for we have evidence that 
Chaucer knew every one of the authorities named in the reproof 
before he wrote either version of the Prologue. 

G 324-327 : 

*He shal nat rightfully his yre wreke 
■^Or he have herd the tother party speke. 

^ Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer ^ n, 249. 
^ Adversus Jovinianum, i, 46. 



^ 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 59 

*A1 ne is nat gospel that is to yow pleyned ; 
*The god of love berth many a tale y-feyned. 

These four lines, which form part of the appeal of Alcestis in 
behalf of the accused poet, are wanting in F. In their place are 
found two new lines, F 348 and 349 : 

*And if ye nere a god that knowen al, 
"^Than raighte hit be, as I yow tellen shal ; 

and a couplet carried back, with slight change, from G 338-339 : 

This man to yow may falsly been accused, 
Ther as by right him oghte been excused. 

In G, as I conceive it to have been written, the appeal of 
Alcestis including the four starred lines had reference only to the 
idea of a court of love in which Cupid himself is judge. There 
is no good reason for interpreting it to mean also the court of 
King Richard. F, however, is distinctly dedicated to the Queen, 
who is represented in it by Alcestis. In F, therefore, whatever 
Alcestis says to her lord is, to say the least, in danger of being 
applied to the king of England, and Chaucer may well have felt 
like toning down somewhat his admonitions to royalty. Yet there 
was no necessity for cutting out the whole passage. It could do 
no harm to intimate to the king that he was liable to hear envious 
slanders, or that a righteous lord should not be like the tyrants of 
Lombardy ; but to tell him that he ought not to wreak vengeance 
before hearing both sides, or refuse to listen to the complaints and 
petitions of his people would be too specific to be wise. 

G 344-345 : 

* Therefor he wroot the Rose and eek Crisseyde 
"^ Of innocence, and niste what he seyde. 
Or him was boden maken thilke tweye 
Of som persone, and durste hit nat with-seye. 

This couplet is wanting in F. Without it, however, thilke tweye 
of line 366 must refer to the mention of the two poems 33 lines 
back, which seems unlikely. If the presence of the lines in G is 
to be used as an argument that they were inserted in the course of 
a revision, we must suppose that Chaucer did not write them in 



60 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

his original. It seems to me much more likely that the couplet 
has been lost from F by the carelessness of a scribe, or inadvert- 
antly omitted by Chaucer in making his revision. 

G348. 

*For he hath writen many a book er this, 

In place of this line we have in F the line, 

*0r him repenteth utterly of this. 

Both lines are so disconnected from the context that either 
might have been readily substituted for the other. It is true, 
however, that the line in F adds a new thought, a new possible 
ground of excuse for the poet, and that the line in G does not, 
and is moreover rather meaningless and unessential as it stands. 
It is fair to assume that the better line is the later one. 



G 360-364. 



G 368-369. 



*And that him oweth, of verray duetee, 
■^Shewen his peple pleyn benignitee, 
*And wel to here hir excusaciouns, 
■^And hir compleyntes and peticiouns, 
*In duewe tyme, whan they shal hit profre. 

*And therto is a king ful depe y-sworn 
*Ful many a hundred winter heer-biforn. 



These lines are to be associated with 11. 324-327 discussed 
above. With them they make up eleven lines which I believe 
were omitted because they seemed inappropriate in an allegorical 
poem. If I understand ten Brink's view perfectly, he would have 
us believe that Chaucer revised the Prologue to make it less of an 
allegory, and at the same time on account of his changed relations 
to the court inserted these further criticisms of royal justice, which, 
if they are to express his personal pique, demand an allegorical 
interpretation. So practised a diplomatist as Chaucer could hardly 
have failed to recognize that criticism of royalty is at all times 
unfruitful if not unwise.^ 

^ Bilderbeck (p. 96 ff. ) argues that these allusions were removed because they 
had done their work and were no longer applicable to King Richard's adminis- 
tration. It seems doubtful, however, that Chaucer would have ventured to be so 
plain-spoken in the first instance. 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 61 

G 400-401. 

^Whyl he was yong, Ke kepte your estat ; 
*I not wher he be now a renegat. 

In a part of the Prologue in which there are few variations 
from G, F wholly lacks this couplet. It is either a slight 
expression of pique inserted by the disgruntled courtier in G, or 
it is a passage natural enough in G as a conventional prologue, 
but so personal as to be in bad taste in a poem in which the god 
of Love becomes a type of the King of England. It is in any 
case such a personal reference as the poet might have discarded 
on second thought. That he inserted it because he was seven or 
eight years older than when he wrote the first draft seems very 
unlikely. 

G 414-415. 

*And of the Wreched Engendring of Mankinde, 
*As man may in pope Innocent y-finde ; 

The presence of this couplet in G and not in F has given rise to 
various conjectures. Kdppel, when he regarded G as the earlier 
version, supposed ^ that Chaucer began the Wreched Engend- 
ring before he wrote G and expecting to finish it mentioned it 
there, and that he later tired of the work and gave it up. Hence 
in the process of revision he dropped it out of F, and some years 
later made use of fragments of the incomplete translation in the 
3fan of Law's Tale. At the same time he carried over the chaif 
figure in G, lines 311 and 529 to the Man of Law's Tale, 1. 701. 

ten Brink, having satisfied himself that G is to be regarded as 
a revision, of course rejected this explanation, and assumed that 
the mention of a work of Chaucer's in what he regarded as the 
later version was strong confirmation of his view. Now Chaucer 
lost his offices in December, 1386.^ From that time until July 
12, 1389, he was not, so far as we know, engaged on any public 
service. This fact and the significant one that in May, 1388, his 
pension was assigned to another justifies the belief that he was, 
during part of this period at least, in financial straits. Hence, 

* Herrig's Archiv, lxxxiv, 406 ; Lxxxv, 48. 

^ Life Records of Chaucer, p. xxxv and pp. 268, 269. 



62 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

argues ten Brink, Chaucer's interest in the treatise of Pope 
Innocent, which he translated at this time, and hence his use in 
the Man of Law^s Tale, written soon after, of the inappropriate 
stanzas on poverty. 

All this hangs together excellently, but is it therefore trust- 
worthy? If F was written in 1385 and G in 1393, Chaucer 
must certainly have done in the interim some work better worth 
mentioning and more appropriate to the context than the transla- 
tion of Pope Innocent. Without attempting to fix the date of 
this translation, I may say that I am not at all convinced that it 
must have been made while Chaucer was himself suffering the 
pangs of poverty. He was not, so far as we know, in prison when 
he translated Boethius. Chaucer's fondness for Boethius and the 
presence of the Melibeus and the Parson's Tale among the Canter- 
bury Tales may show us that his own taste and the taste of his 
age made it possible for him to find the De Miseria Conditionis 
Humanae interesting at any time. That his translation of it must 
have been made about 1387—1388 is therefore merely a conjecture, 
and a weak link in ten Brink's chain of argument. Another such 
link is the assumption that the stanzas on poverty translated from 
Innocent and prefixed to the Man of Law's Tale were dragged in 
because of the poet's personal feelings. However we may feel 
about it, Chaucer evidently regarded these stanzas as a suitable 
introduction to the tale, which, it must be remembered, is told in 
character. They are quite consistent in style with the tale itself, 
and a remote and formal approach to the subject is not inconsistent 
with the character of the Man of Law. It is improbable that 
Chaucer ever suffered such poverty as he apostrophises here, and 
is perhaps unlikely that, if he had, he would speak of it as he does 
in these stanzas. Last of all it may be remarked that ten Brink's 
date for the Man of Law's Tale, 1391, is also purely conjectural. 
Koch's guess ^ puts it about 1386, and Skeat^ thinks that it was 
composed in 1380 and revised in 1387. My conclusion is that 
the couplet mentioning the Wreched Engendring of Mankinde 
has no significance as to the relative date of the two Prologues^ 

^ Chronology of Chaucer's Writings, p. 79. 
"^ Oxford Chaucer, in, 413. 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 63 

and that its absence in F is due either to the error of a scribe or 
to Chaucer's feeling that it added nothing to the poem and might 
well be dropped out. 

G 527-532. 

525-532 Than seyde Love, a ful gret negligence 
Was hit to thee, to write unstedfastnesse 
*0f women, sit thou knowest hir goodnesse 
*By preef, and eek by stories heer-biforn ; 
*Let be the chaf, and wryt wel of the corn, 
*Why noldest thou han writen of Alceste, 
*And leten Criseide been a-slepe and reste ? 
*For of Alceste shulde thy wryting be, . . . 

This passage repeats substantially the reproof of Love in 11. 
266 ff., narrowing it down to Alcestis. It is therefore quite con- 
sistent with the purpose of the poem if that purpose be the 
glorification of wifely fidelity with Alcestis as its type. Any 
change of purpose which would make it possible to omit the first 
of these two passages, i. e., 11. 266 ff., would also make it easy to 
change the second. 

The lines which take the place of these in F, reflect a previous 
change in the ballad. They are : 

F 539-543. 

537-543 Than seyde Love, ' a ful gret negligence ' 
Was hit to thee, that ilke tyme thou made 
*^^Hyd, Absolon, thy tresses,' ' in balade, 
*That thouforgete hir in thy song to sette 
*Sin that thou art so gretly in hir dette, 
And wost so wel, that kalender is she 
*To any woman that wol lover be. 

In F the poet sings his ballad in praise of a lovely lady whose 
identity he does not yet know. Among the beautiful and faithful 
women mentioned in it the name of Alcestis does not appear, since 
in the original form it occupied the place of honor in the refrain. 
This justifies the reproof; for whether Love interprets the refrain, 
"My lady cometh,'' as applying originally to Alcestis or not, the 
poet has failed to "set her in his song.'' Very naturally there 
follows immediately the injunction to make good his neglect by 
giving her the place of climax in the Legend. 



64 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 



III. Lines Peculiar to the F-Version. 

Some of the lines which are peculiar to the F-version have been 
considered already in their relation to those lines of G to which, 
in a sense, they correspond, and which, according to my view, 
they have displaced in the process of revision. Many others, 
however, cannot be regarded as having taken the place of lines 
omitted from G. If F is a revised version, they are absolute 
additions designed to enrich the poem or to contribute to the better 
fulfilment of its purpose. If F is an original version and G a 
revision of it, these lines are deliberate omissions dropped out of 
the poem for some specific reason which it should be possible at 
least to conjecture. 

That such a reason is to be found in their intrinsic value as 
poetic lines, no one has ventured to maintain, for it is these lines 
that justify the assertion that F is the less conventional, the more 
elaborate, and the more subjective poem. No more vigorous or 
effective passages occur in either Prologue than some of those that 
appear to be additions in F. Three reasons have been suggested 
as possible grounds for the omission of such lines. These are, 
first, that they allude too clearly to the Queen to suit Chaucer's 
mood at the time of revision,^ second, that they are too lyrical in 
tone to be suitable in a Canterbury Tale,^ and, third, that they 
were omitted in the course of revision in order to give G a more 
compact and coherent structure.^ 

The latter view, that of Lowes, assumes that certain parts of F 
lack unity and coherence because they have been composed " with 
the eye on a foreign original.'' Some attention was paid to this 
assumption in the preceding chapter, and the relation of the 
Prologue to two of the French poems has been discussed in connec- 
tion with the plan of the poem. The other French originals may 
be considered now. 

^ ten Brink, Englische Studien, xvn, 19. 

^Koeppel, Literaturblat f. rom. u. ger. Philol, 1893 (February), col. 52. 

^ Lowes, p. 661. 



Uliaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 65 

Besides the Lay de Franchise and the Paradys d^ Amours, which 
have been discussed, Lowes cites parallels from four different 
poems. These are Froissart's, Little de la flour de la Margherite, 
Machault\s, Lit de la Marguerite, Froissart's, Lejoli mois dellay, 
and one of Deschamps' balades. 

The last two mentioned may be dismissed from consideration 
by shoAving that they are parallel to G as well as to F. 

G-Prologue, 11. 53-55. Lejoli mois de If ay, 11. 289-290. 

This dayesye of alle floures flour, Car elle est la flour souverainne 

Fulfild of vertu and of alle honour, De bontd et de beaute plainne. 

Balade No. 532, 1. 16. 
And ever y-lyke fair, and fresh of hewe. Qui en tons temps belle et fresche sera. 

In the case of another the parallel is so far from convincing 
that it is likewise to be dismissed from consideration. 

Prologue F, 11. 50-52. Dit de la Margherite. 

That blisful sighte softneth al my sorwe. Car elle m'a gari d'oultre la mer. 

De ma doulour. 

So glad am I whan that I have presence Si la doy bien servir et honnourer 

Of hit, to doon al maner reverence. Et mettre en li cuer, et corps, et penser. 

In the absence of any confirmatory evidence that Chaucer made 
use of the Lit, this citation, parallel to Chaucer in only what 
is commonplace, has no meaning whatever. The lover's doulour 
has been healed by the sight of his sweetheart from time imme- 
morial. 

Turning now to the Littie, we find that the first parallel, which 
is undeniably close, is represented in both versions : 

Prologue G, 11. 48-49. Dittie de la Marguerite, 11. 162-166. 

To seen these floures agein the sonne . . . Car n'ai aultre desir 

sprede, Que de 1' avoir pour veoir a loisir 

Whan hit up-riseth by the morwe Au vespre clore et au matin ouvrir, 
shene. Et la soleil de tout le jour sievir 

Et ses florons contre lui espanir. 

What we have left consists of two brief citations from the 
Littie, which are parallel to four lines peculiar to F. They are 
as follows : 



6Q The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

F Prologue, 11. 56-59. Dittie de la Marguerite, 11. 81-82. 

And I love hit, and ever y-lyke newe, Comme celle est que j'aim d' entente 
And ever shal, til that myn herte dye ; pure, 

Et aimerai tous jours, quoi que j' endure. 

11. 159-162. 
Al swere I nat, of this I wol nat lye, S'en ce parti vivoie, nul millour 

Ther loved no wight hotter in his lyve. Ne doit querir 

Horns, ce m'est vis, qui tant aime et 
desir 
La flour que fai. 

Now if we had before us forty lines peculiar to F which could 
be traced to French sources, instead of four, or admitting 50-52, 
seven at most, there would still be lacking any proof that the 
version containing them was the earlier. I have followed out 
these parallels in such detail simply to make it clear that the 
"loosely-linked cento " of quotations in F reduces itself on exam- 
ination to a somewhat insignificant matter after all. 

That either in the structure of F, or in the relation of the Pro- 
logue to Froissart's Ditti^, any satisfactory explanation of the 
omissions from F has been offered, I cannot believe. If there is 
any passage in the Legend that deserves the epithet loosely-linked 
it is G 48—60, with its abrupt transitions, its floating, parenthetic 
lines (50 and 53), and its sudden and unexplained shifts in point 
of view at lines 51 and 55. F, on the other hand, is logically 
coherent throughout and maintains a single point of view, that of 
the poet. Moreover, each of the passages is obviously an expan- 
sion of the idea preceding it. "I go early to see the daisy open,'' 
says the poet, " and (1. 50) that sight softens my sorrow, so glad 
am I to do it reverence.'' '^I love it," he says again, "and (1. 57) 
ever shal, til my heart die." The fact that the second passage is 
related to the Dittie, proves, as I have intimated, nothing at all as 
to the order of the versions. We have no reason for believing 
that when Chaucer once used a poem as a source, he laid it aside 
forever. The very work of revising the Prologue would inevitably 
recall to his mind the works that suggested his first essay at a 
Marguerite poem, and would probably send him to them for 
improvements. If, as I believe, he revised with a changed pur- 
pose, the DlttUj which celebrates a living Margaret, would naturally 
occur to him. 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 67 

We may next consider the lines in the light of the conjectures 
of Koeppel and ten Brink, quoting them again for the sake of 
clearness. 

F 50-57. 

*That blisful sighte softneth al my sorwe, 
*So glad am I whan that I have presence 
*0f hit, to doon al maner reverence, 

And I love hit. . . . 

*And ever shal til that myn herte dye ; 
"^Al swer I nat, of this I wol nat lye, 
*Ther loved no wight hotter in his lyve. 

This fervent avowal of love for the daisy, though the last couplet 
of it suggests an allegory, contains in itself no such clear refer- 
ence to the Queen as would require its omission were such references 
deliberately omitted, nor is it more lyrical than many parts of the 
Canterbury Tales. In themselves the lines suggest no reason why 
they should be sacrificed. That they add life and genuineness to 
the rather tame, so greet offeGcioun, of G is an obvious reason why 
they should have been added. When these lines are considered 
along with other clearer allegorical hints, we see that they fore- 
shadow the celebration of the Queen under the type of the daisy, 
and we may readily conclude that they were added chiefly because 
the poet had a new purpose in mind as he wrote them. 

F 68-72. 

*But helpeth, ye that han conning and might, 
*Ye lovers, that can make of sentement ; 
*In this cas oghte ye be diligent 
*To forthren me somwhat in my labour, 
*Whether ye ben with the leef or with the flour. 

In G the allusion to the love-poets who have preceded Chaucer, 
speaks of them in the third person, and contains no such invo- 
cation as this.^ In F the whole passage is enlivened by being 

* The absence of these lines in G is accounted for by Lowes on the ground that 
by the time of the revision the Marguerite poems had become an old story to 
Chaucer. Tlie reason is entirely inadequate for the effect. The appeal and the 
direct address are better poetry than the comparatively lifeless passage in G, and 
Chaucer had no motive that we can think of for such a change of feeling toward 



68 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

thrown into the second person and enriched by the addition of 
these lines. The appeal to ^^ lovers that can make of sentement " 
is based upon the special character of the poet's aim, an aim, 
which, it is to be noticed carefully, is quite different in the two 
Prologues. In G, 

. . . hit is seid in forthering and honour 
Of hem that either serven leef or flour. 

This rather feeble and general dedication of the poet's work gives 
place in F to, 

.... ye see I do hit in the honour 
Of love, and eek in service of the flour, 
Whom that I serve .... 

Remembering that when such a phrase as '^ service of the flour " 
occurs in the French 3Iarguerite poems, it signifies devotion to a 
mistress of flesh and blood, and never to a mythological character 
like Alcestis, w^e may observe that Chaucer appeals to lover-poets 
on the ground of a double purpose — the glorification of love, and 
of a living person symbolized by the daisy. Who this person is 
the next passage gives us an intimation, which becomes perfectly 
clear only when the poem is dedicated to the Queen. 

F 83-96. 

81-96 Sin that ye see I do hit in the honour 
Of love, and eek in service of the flour, 
■^Whom that I serve as I have wit or might. 
*Sbe is the clernesse and the verray light, 
*That in this derke worlde me wynt and ledeth, 
*The herte in-with my sorowful brest you dredeth, 
*And loveth so sore, that ye ben verrayly 
*The maistresse of my wit, and nothing I. 
*My word, my werk, is knit so in your bonde, 
*That, as an harpe obeyeth to the honde 

the Flower and Leaf poets as would induce him to give up the better for the 
worse. Mere lapse of time is no ground for the omission of F 68-72 or for the 
change of second person to third. If we suppose that after the somewhat tame 
allusion in G, Chaucer's interest in the French poems was quickened by a re- 
reading of them, or by his correspondence with one of the poets, we can readily 
see how the revised poem would show a livelier feeling and would contain the 
direct appeal wanting in the first draft. Otherwise we must suppose Chaucer to 
have revised capriciously and unsuccessfully. 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 69 

*And maketh hit sonne after liis fingeringe, 
*Kight so mowe ye out of myn herte bringe 
*Swich vols, right as yow list to laugh or pleyne, 
*Be ye my gyde and lady sovereyne ; 
*As to myn ertlily god, to yow I calle, 
■^Both in this werke and in my sorwes alle. 

There can be no doubt that this allusion to the daisy, which 
drifts so easily into the second person and becomes an earnest 
invocation of a ^'gyde and lady sovereyne,'^ is allegorical, and 
that, in view of lines 496-497, the daisy can only symbolize the 
Queen of England. No such allegorical interpretation of G is 
possible. If the daisy in the corresponding part of that version 
stands for any person, it can only symbolize the virtuous Alcestis. 
If this passage in F has been omitted in the course of a revision, 
therefore, it is fair to assume that the allusion to the Queen is 
responsible for its rejection. Nothing but the strongest kind of 
external evidence, however, would justify us in believing that 
Chaucer sacrificed these fine lines merely because he was out of 
suits with fortune. The conclusion that accords best with the 
other evidence, as well as with common sense, is that F here 
shows the effects of revision with a slightly changed purpose, that 
is, the invocation of the Queen as patroness of the poem.^ 

F 103-118 : 

^My busy gost, that thrusteth alwey newe 
*To seen this flour so yong, so fresh of hewe, 
*Ck)nstreyned me with so gledy desyr, 
*That in my herte I fele yit the fyr, 
*That made me to ryse er hit wer day — 

And this was now the firste morwe of May — 
*With dredful herte and glad devocioun, 
'^For to ben at the resurrecioun 
*0f this flour, whan that it shulde unclose 
*Agayn the sonne, that roos as rede as rose, 
^That in the brest was of the beste that day, 
*That Agenores doghter ladde away. 
■'^And doun on knees anon-right I me sette, 
■^And, as I coude, this fresshe flour I grette ; 
*Kneling alwey, til hit unclosed was, 
*Upon the smale softe swote gras. 

^ The relation of these lines to the Filostrato, pointed out by Lowes, seems to me 
rather to confirm this hypothesis than to weaken it, for both passages have the 
same purpose. 



70 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

These lines are consistent with the allegory in that they repre- 
sent a much greater devotion to the daisy than is displayed in G, 
yet they are necessarily so much more literal that a reviser bent 
on removing all references to the Queen would certainly have been 
tempted to spare them for their poetic value. Much more certainly 
would Chaucer, in revising G, have regarded such lines as these as 
an undoubted improvement. 

F 143-144 : 

*Upon the braunches ful of blosmes softe, 
*In hir delyt, they turned hem ful ofte. 

In the part of G that corresponds to this passage in F, the 
text is so corrupt that the couplet wanting in G may possibly 
have fallen out. It is quite as possible, however, that these two 
lines, giving as they do a thoroughly good descriptive touch, were 
added as an improvement. 



F 152-187 



^Construeth that as yow list, I do no cure. 
*And tho that hadde doon unkindenesse — 
*As doth the tydif, for new-fangelnesse — 

155 *Besoghte mercy of hir trespassinge, 
■^And humblely songen hir repentinge, 
*And sworen on the blosmes to be trewe, 
*So that hir makes wolde upon hem rewe, 
*And at the laste maden hir acord. 

160 ^Al founde they Daunger for a tyme a lord, 
■^Yet Pitee, through his stronge gentil might, 
■^Forgaf, and made Mercy passen Right 
■^Through innocence and ruled curtesye 
■'^But I ne clepe nat innocence folye, 

165 ■^Ne fals pitee, for ' vertu is the mene.' 
*As Etik saith, in swich maner I mene. 
*And thus thise foules, voide of al malyce, 
^Acordeden to love, and laften vyce 
*0f hate, and songen alle of oon acord, 

170 *Welcome, somer, our governour and lord ! ' 
*And Zephirus and Flora gentilly 
*Yaf to the fioures, softe and tenderly, 
*Hir swote breth, and made hem for to sprede 
^As god and goddesse of the floury mede ; 

175 *In which methoughte I mighte, day by day, 
*Dwellen alwey, the loly month of May, 
*Withouten sleep, withouten mete or drinke. 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 71 

*A-doun ful softely I gan to sinke ; 

*And, leninge on myn elbow and my syde, 
180 The longe day I slioop me for to abyde 

*For nothing elles, and I shal nat lye, 
But for to loke upon the dayeseye, 

*That wel by reson men hit calle may 

*The ' dayeseye ' or elles the * ye of day,' 
185 *The emperice and flour of floures alle. 

*I pray to god that faire mot she falle, 

*And alle that loven floures, for hir sake ! 

This thoroughly Chaucerian passage gives us a much fuller 
description of the birds' May-festival, which is quite in the spirit 
of the poets whose help he has invoked, continues the note of 
romantic devotion to the daisy, and in the concluding verses once 
more makes clear its allegorical significance. The more elaborate 
description of the May-day scene is consistent with the other 
changes by which the date is definitely fixed as the first day of 
May, and the whole scene is transferred from dream to reality. It 
ought not to be necessary to insist that all these changes are 
improvements, and that no passage omitted from G contributed so 
much to the atmosphere of the poem and to its total eifect as this 
episode of the bird-mating on May-day. 

F201. 

*To goon to reste and erlyfor to ryse. 

To seen this flour to sprede, as I devyse. 

This couplet consists of a line brought from a different context 
in G (1. 106) and a new line (F 201) which rimes with it. The 
lines could very easily be dropped out without destroying the 
sense (see G 95—96), yet the fact that the line which is common to 
both versions occurs earlier in G, and that the description of the 
May scene is consistently fuller and better in F justifies the belief 
that the other process has taken place, and that this natural touch 
was added to improve the passage. This couplet makes Chaucer's 
early morning walk into the meadows an habitual thing and not a 
special occurrence. 

F 271-275. 

270-275 This balade may ful wel y-songen be 
*As I have seyd erst, by my lady free ; 



72 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

*For certeynly, alle these mow nat suffyse 
^To apperen with my lady in no wyse. 
^For as the sonne wol the fyr disteyne, 
*So passeth al my lady sovereyne. 

If F is to be regarded as the original version, we must account 
for the omission of these lines. They could not have been omitted 
as weak lines, nor even as tautological in that they repeat the 
sense of 11. 247—248, for the introduction of the new figure of 
speech saves them from bald repetition, and the words, "as I 
have seyd erst," show that the repetition was conscious and delib- 
erate. They need not have been omitted because of a change 
from Ballad F to Ballad G, for they might easily have been recast 
to apply to Alcestis. We have left only ten Brink's unsatisfactory 
hypothesis that Chaucer revised in order to get rid of personal 
allusions. The truth is, I feel sure, that the lines were added to 
adapt the meaning of the ballad to the Queen, and that they are 
a direct consequence of the change of " Alceste is here " to " My 
lady Cometh.'^ The repetition in the devout line (277), 

I prey to god that ever falle hir faire 

which is almost identical with F 186, 

I pray to god that faire mot she falle, 

is probably unconscious, since line 277 is taken over from G with 
its context. 

F335. 

332-335 And of Criseyede thou hast seyd as thee liste, 
That maketh men to wommen lasse triste, 
That ben as trewe as ever was any steel. 
^ Of thyn ansivere avyse thee right weel ; 

The long tirade of the God of Love in G, which Chaucer 
omitted, probably because it was least essential to the new purpose 
of the second version, is represented in F by a few significant 
lines of G and one entirely new line to complete the second 
couplet. The allusion to the fidelity of women is made general 
instead of specific, and the harshness of the reproof is greatly 
mitigated. In spite of the interest of the list of books for the 
Chaucer student, it is not unfair to say that the loss to the poem 
is not very great. 



Chaucer^s Legend of Good Women. 73 

F357. 

353-358 And many a queyhte totelere accusour, 
That tabouren in your eres many a soun, 
Right after hir imaginacioun, 
To have your daliance, and for envye ; 
* These been the causes, and I shal not lye. 
Envye is lavender of the court alway ; 

The corresponding passage in G reads : 

332-334 And for to han with yow some daliaunce, 

Envye (I prey to god yeve hir mischaunce ! ) 
Is lavender in the grete court alway. 

The one new line in F is made necessary by the change of the 
riming word in 1. 356, and is much in the nature of a stop-gap. 
The general result, however, is advantageous, for the mention of 
envy in line 356 prepares the way for the fuller description of 
that vice which immediately follows, links the thought of the two 
sentences, and does away with the abruptness of the transition 
from G 332 to G 333. 



F380. 



379-381. He moste think hit is his lege man, 

"^And is his tresour, and his gold in cofre. 
This is the sentence of the philosophre. 



Line 380 is inserted to supply the rime lost by the rejection 
of lines 360-364 of G, which, as has been already said, were 
probably omitted because of their too specific allusion to the duty 
of a king to his subjects. 

F 496-497. 

And whan this book is maad yive hit the queue 
On my behalfe, at Eltham, or at Shene. 

The absence of this couplet from G might possibly be ascribed 
to accident, if it were not that it agrees with numerous allegorical 
allusions to the Queen which are also wanting in G. These make 
it conclusive that the poem is dedicated to the Queen as an allegory 
in which she is the central figure. The fact that Alcestis, who 
speaks these lines, is herself in a sense a type of the Queen, does 
not invalidate this interpretation. This couplet is a touch of reality 



74 The Problem of the Tico Prologues to 

suddenly interjected into the account of supernatural events, and 
is hardly conceived or spoken in character. Whatever incongruity 
is found in it, however, only serves to heighten the impression, 
already conveyed by the use of the ballad, that F is an adaptation 
of G to a purpose for which it was not at first intended. The 
abruptness of the introduction of the couplet in a part of the 
Prologue in which no other changes have been made is additional 
confirmation. 

However this allusion to the Queen got into F, it is there and 
must be dealt with. To say that it shows that F was to be read 
at court, contributes nothing to the solution of the problem. To 
say that it merely shows that the poem was written at the com- 
mand of the Queen, is to admit that the G-version, which lacks 
the allusion, was not so written, and the admission goes far toward 
confirming the theory that the allegory in F bears a special rela- 
tion to the Queen. The couplet is, in fact, I feel sure, nothing 
less than a dedication of the F-version to the Queen of England, 
and in the light of other passages, an intimation, that the whole 
poem is to be regarded as an elaborate compliment to her. 



F 552-577. 



552 *But er I go, thus muche I wol thee telle 

*Ne shal no trewe lover come in helle. 

■^Thise other ladies sittinge here arowe 
555 ^Ben in thy balade, if thou canst hem knowe, 

■^And in thy bokes alle thou shalt hem finde ; 

*Have hem now in thy Legend alle in minde, 

*I mene of hem that been in thy knowinge. 

*For heer ben twenty thousand mo sittinge 
560 *Than thou knowest, that been good women alle 

*And trewe of love, for aught that may befalle ; 

*Make the metres of hem as thee leste. 

*I mot gon hoom, the sonne draweth weste, 

*To Paradys, with al this eompanye ; 
565 *And serve alwey the fresshe dayesye 
At Cleopatre I wol that thou beginne ; 
And so forth ; and my love so shalt thou winne. 

*For lat see now what man that lover be 

*Wol doon so strong a peyne for love as she. 
570 *I wot it wel that thou mayst nat al hit ryme, 

*That swiche lovers diden in hir tyme ; 

*It were to long to reden and to here ; 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 75 

*Suffyceth me, thou make in this manere, 
*That thou reherce of al hir lyf the grete, 
575 *After thise olde auctors listen to trete. 
*For who-so shal so many a storie telle, 
*Sey shortly, or he shal to longe dwelle 

In a part of this long passage pecnliar (except 566 and 567) to 
F, ten Brink saw evidence of a conscious change of plan between 
the first version and the revision, — a change which made some of 
these lines no longer appropriate. In a preceding chapter I have 
endeavored to show that there is no necessity for assuming that 
Chaucer's plan as to the heroines whose legends he meant to write 
ever suffered any change that is evident to us. Even if it be 
granted that some modification of his original plan developed as 
he proceeded, it is hard to see why any of the lines in this passage 
should have been taken so literally as to seem inconsistent with 
the modified scheme. In fact any good reason for the omission 
of F 552-577 is hard to find. The fact that they make the 
Prologue fuller and more specific where it is somewhat bald and 
abrupt in G, and that in their allusion to the poet's books and to 
an example of fidelity in love, they in some degree take the place 
of G 267 ff.,is good ground for believing them a later addition. 

IV. Lines Partly Identical in Both Versions. 

Many minor variations between the two Prologues affect only 
parts of lines. There remain to be considered, therefore, the 
lines which are partly identical in the two versions. In these we 
may expect to find valuable evidence ; for whatever the purpose 
with which the poet undertook his revision, he can hardly have 
failed in the course of it to make numerous minor improvements, 
some of which we can hope to discern. Some lines, however, wdll 
be found equally good in both versions, and may be considered to 
differ merely because they were written at different times, and yet 
others may owe their differences to the vagaries of scribes. 

In the classification of these variations, w^hich I have regarded 
as changes made in the G-version, the over-lapping of divisions 
has been avoided so far as possible ; but in some cases it has 



76 The Problem of the Two P^^ologues to 

seemed desirable to discuss a line under two different categories. 
Improvements in sense and meter often coincide. Changes made 
chiefly for the sake of consistency with other changes may involve 
incidental improvement in structure or rhythm. It is inevitable 
that some variations should be open to controversy, and to one 
familiar with the history of the problem of the two Prologues it 
will not be surprising if a few of the arguments should be made 
in other hands to work the other way. Mathematically exact 
proof is impossible. What the classification is expected to prove 
is that the general direction of the evidence is clearly in favor of 
F as the revised version, and that the conclusions of the preceding 
chapters are strikingly confirmed. 

The nature of the classification ^ which I have undertaken may 
be indicated in general as follows : 

I. Changes for Metrical Improvement. 

1. Changes which avoids harsh or unpleasant repetitious. 

2. Changes which obviate direct attack. 

3. Changes which result in more sonorous or more fluent lines. 

II. Changes for Improvement in Grammatical Structure. 

III. Changes for Improvement in Sense. 

IV. Changes for Consistency. 

1. Changes which conform to the allegorical purpose of F. 

2. Changes which conform to other changes. 

V. Incidental Variations. 



I. CHANGES FOR METRICAL IMPROVEMENT. 

1. Changes which avoid harsh or unpleasant repetitions. 

G 1 A thousand syihes have I herd men telle, 
F 1 A thousand tymes have I herd men telle. 

The repetition of the ^A-sound is avoided in F by the change 
of sythes to tymes, and the alliteration of the line is improved. It 

^ A somewhat similar method is used by Bilderbeck (p. 78). It is perhaps fair 
to say that my own investigations were complete before his dissertation came to 
my hands, and that they remain practically unchanged. 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women, 7 7 

may also be noted, as Skeat remarks/ that tymes is the later and 
more familiar term. 

G 4 But natheles, tJiis wot I wel also, 
F 4 But natheles, yit wot I wel also. 

Here again the change of a single word has obviated the repe- 
tition of the harsh ^/i-sound. The difference in this case is perhaps 
slight, but the evidence that the poet's fine ear detected the echo 
of the sound and led him to seek variety is cumulative, as will be 
seen in the next line. 

G 5 That ther nis noon that dwelleth in this contree, 
F 5 That ther nis noon dwelling in this contree. 

F is unmistakably a better line. In G there is an awkward 
heaping up of the ^/i-sounds. The change of that dwelleth to 
dwelling removes two of them, and makes a much more fluent line. 
The monotonous succession of monosyllables is at the same time 
broken up, and a pleasing variation is gained by the use of the 
secondary accent in dwelling to bear the stress. 

Legouis remarks ^ that G is encumbered and somewhat obscured 
by the three consecutive thats in lines 5 and 6. The fault, which 
though a slight one is not likely to have been committed in the 
course of a careful revision, is remedied by the change to dicelling. 

.... on olde bokes leve 
G 28 Ther as ther is non other assay by preve. 

.... honouren and beleve. 
F 28 These bokes, ther we han non other preve. 

In G, ther as ther is makes an unpleasant jingle which is avoided 
in F by recasting the line without materially changing the sense. 

G 32 And to hem yeve swich lust and swich credence, 
F 31 And to hem yeve Ifeyth and ful credence. 

The repetition of swich if not harsh is pointless, and the change 
which removes it improves the line metrically. 

G 56 Fulfild of vertu and of alle honour, 
F 54 Fulfilled of al vertu and honour. 

* Oxford Chaucer, iii, xxi. 
^Legouis, p. 66. 



78 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

The repetition of of in the same part of the foot gives the line a 
slightly disagreeable sameness of rhythm. The omission of the 
second of relieves this and gives a decidedly better line. 

G 80 Of olde story, er swich stryf was begunne/ 
F 196 of olde story, er swich thing was begonne. 

G is a heaping up of sibilants, especially awkward in the 
succession swich stryf. This has been remedied by the change to 
thing y which makes a fluent line. 

G 95 For derknesse of the night, of which she dredde, 
F 199 For derknesse of the night, the which she dredde. 

Here again the repetition of of is deliberately avoided in order 
to make a smoother and more pleasing line. 

G 185 Byhind this god of love, upon this grene, 
F 282 Behind this god of love, upon the grene, 

The monotonous repetition of this has been obviated by changing 
the second this to the article. The result is a better line. 

G 189 That, | sin that | God Adam made of erthe, 
F 286 That, sin | that God Adam had made of erthe. 

The direct attack on that followed by the ictus on the second 
that makes a very awkward repetition, which is especially obtrusive 
because both words bear the verse stress. The line is greatly 
improved by the insertion of had in F, which throws the repeated 
words into unaccented places and diminishes the effect of the 
repetition. 

^ Of the change of this and the preceding line to F 195-196, Lowes asks (p. 665), 
'' Granted the careful discrimination involved in the loerk and stryf of A [G] 79-80, 
what conceivable motive could there be for substituting, not for one only, but for 
both, the least discriminating word in the language — namely, thing f^' Such a 
motive I have already suggested in the metrical improvement of F 196, improve- 
ment which might perhaps be insisted on in the case of F 195 also. Moreover, 
thing is in Chaucer's usage not always the very general term that it is in modern 
English, but is here evidently used in a sense akin to that in which it is employed 

in F 364, 

But for he useth (hinges for to make. 

The contrast is between this poem and that genre of poetry, and thing is used in a 
sense almost technical. It is not at all true, therefore, that the word is "not apt," 
or that the more literal discrimination of G is necessarily an improvement. 



Chaucei''s Legend of Good Women, 79 

G 188-190 Arid after hem com | of wemlen swich | a tras 
That, sin that god Adam made of erthe, 
The thredde part | of wem \en ne \ the ferthe, 
Ne wende I nat by possibilitee. 

F 285-287 And after hem com of women swich a traas 
That, sin that god Adam had mad of erthe 
The thridde part of man | kynd, or \ the ferthe. 

In G 1 90 o/ wemen echoes the same phrase in the same metrical 
position in 1. 188 and ne anticipates the first word of the following 
line. Such needless echoes a careful writer in our day seeks to 
avoid, and Chaucer was no less scrupulous. In this case he has 
altered both expressions, without materially changing the sense of 
the line, so as to destroy the repetition. 

G 198 And kneled adoun, as it were for the nones, 
F 295 And kneled doun, as it were for the nones. 

In G a running together of kneled adoun into something like 
kneFda-doun with a harsh repetition of the d-sound is almost 
inevitable. In F kneled is dissyllabic and the repetition is removed 
making a decidedly better line. 

G 209 Alceste is here, that al that may desteyne. 
F 255 My lady cometh, that al this may disteyne. 

The recurrence of that in G in the same position in the foot is 
obtrusive and unpleasing. Since the line is a thrice-used refrain 
the slightest defect is magnified in importance. This fact Chaucer 
has recognized in changing the second that to this. If we accept 
the theory that G is a revision of F we must explain why he has 
here made a worse line of a better. 

G 213 Eek Cleopatre, with al thy passioun, 
F 259 And Cleopatre, with al thy passioun, 

Eek Cleopatre involves a harsh repetition of ^-sounds, ek-kle, 
which is removed by the change of eek to and. 

They setten hem .... 
G 227 By ordre alle in compas, alle enveroun, 
F 300 And with that word, a compas enviroun, 

They setten hem .... 

The repetition of alle in G serves no good purpose and mars the 



80 The Frobleni of the Two Prologues to 

line. It is avoided in F, the omission of it coinciding with 
improvements in sense. 

G 228 First sat the god of love, and than this quene, 
F 302 First sat the god of love, and sith his quene. 

The recurrence of the M-sounds in than this is avoided by the 
change to sith his in F to the advantage of the line. 

G 316 Thou shalt repente hit, that hit shal be sene ! 

F 339-340 If that thou live, thou shalt repenten this 
So cruelly, that hit shal wel be sene ! 

The repetition of hit in G is one reason for the awkwardness of 
the line. In F the thought is expanded into two fluent and 
effective lines. 

G 343 And takth non heed of what matere he take, 
F 365 Him rekketh noght of what matere he take. 

Takth in G is echoed by take at the end of the line. The 

uneuphonious repetition is avoided by the change in F to rekketh 

noght. 

G 437 That, if that I wol save my degree, 
F 447 If, that I wolde save my degree. 

That if that I is unpleasing on account of the recurrence of that 
in the same part of two consecutive feet. Moreover, lines 444 
and 445 above are already overburdened with initial thats. Decided 
metrical improvement, as well as better sense, results from the 
change to If that I wolde in F. 

G 485 Go now thy way, thy penance is but lyte. 
F 495 Go now thy way, this penance is but lyte. 

The change of the second thy of G to this is an improvement 
because it destroys the monotony of the repetition. 

2. Changes which obviate direct attach. 

G 189 That | sin that god Adam made of erthe, 
F 286 That sin | that god Adam had mad of erthe, 

G 192 Hadjden ever in this world y-be, 
F 289 Had ever in this ivyde world y-be. 

G 374 This | shal he doon, bothe to pore [and] riche, 
F 388 Yit mot j he doon bothe right to pore and riche. 



Chauce7'^s Legend of Good Women. 81 

G 403 He | hath maked lewed folk delyte. 
F 415 Yet hath | he maked lewed folk deljte. 

Although direct attack^ producing the so-called headless or 
clipped Hues, was regarded by Chaucer as an admissible variation, 
and occurs in a few cases in both versions, such lines are excep- 
tional. It is difficult to believe that the poet ever mutilated a 
complete and satisfactory line in order to produce direct attack. 
Four examples of incomplete lines in G which have been deliber- 
ately filled out in F, and the absence of any evidence of the 
converse process, contribute to the proof that F is a revised version. 

3. Changes ivhich result in more sonorous or more fluent lines. 

G 27 Wei oghte iis than on olde bokes leve, 
F 27 Wei oghte us than honouren and beleve, 
These bokes .... 

G is full of short words and hard consonants. F is more 
sonorous besides being fuller in sense. Legouis remarks ^ of this 
line that F has "plus de ferveur d^accent, . . . . il est d'un 
rythme plus libre et plus sur.^' 

G 34 That/ro)7i my bokes make me to goon. 
F 34 That /ro my bokes maketh me to goon. 

The change of from my to fro my is a gain in euphony, and the 
use of maketh instead of the subjunctive make gives a livelier sense 
and improves a somewhat meager line. 

G 39 Farwel my studie as lasting that sesoun ! 
F 39 Farwel my book and my devocioun / 

G 39 is an awkward line both in meter and in sense. As lasting 
that sesoun is a weak ending, apparently a tag introduced chiefly 
for the sake of the rime. No such suspicion can attach to the 
phrase which takes its place in F. And my devocioun improves 
the line metrically and, at the same time, provides in sense a 
suitable climax for the passage which it concludes. 



G 68 7 hope that they wil nat ben evel apayd. 
F 80 Fovbereth me and beth nat evel apayd. 



^Legouis, p. 66, 



82 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

The introduction of forberethy which breaks up a succession of 
monosyllables, and of me and beth, which carry out a succession of 
e-sounds, makes a far better line metrically. The directness of F 
is also a great improvement in sense. 

G 72 As of the leef, ageyn the flour, to make ; 
F 189 In preysing of the flour agayn the leef. 

F is better massed, and is a smoother line. The string of 
monosyllables at the beginning of G is broken up in F. 

G 75 For as to me is leefer noon ne lother, 
F 191 For as to me nis lever noon ne lother, 

In F the hiatus at the caesura is removed, and there is a gain 
in alliteration. 

G 76 I am with-holde yit with never nother. 
F 192 I nam with-holden yit with never nother. 

As in the preceding lines, F is better by the introduction of the 
Uj which separates the vowels and gives alliteration. 

G 98 Y-benched newe with turves fi-esshe y-grave. 
F 204 That benched was on turves fresshe y-grave. 

The removal of one of the ^/-preterits improves the line, and 
that benched was makes better and closer sen§e. The sense of 
newe is sufficiently represented hj fresshe. 

G 103 I fel a-slepe within an houre or two. 
F 209 I fel on-slepe in-with an houre or two. 

On-slepe is more euphonious here than a-slepe. 

G 133 Without f e re I penting mynherte swete, 
F 147 Without \en re\ penting myn herte swete, 

F is a more sonorous line. 

G 159 Of silk, t/-brouded ful of grene greves ; 
F 227 In silke, ew-brouded ful of grene greves. 

In F there is a more harmonious succession of vowel sounds 
produced by the use of in and en and an alliteration of syllables 
ending in n. The result is a more sonorous line. 

G 220 Ysiphile, betrayed with Jasoun, 
F 266 Ysiphile, betraysed with Jasoun, 



Chaucer* s Legend of Good Women. 83 

Betraysed is better than betrayed for this place, because it adds 
weight to a too-light line, relieving a heaping-up of vowel and 
half-vowel sounds. 

G 323 And therto rightful and eek merciable. 
F 347 And therto gracious and merciable. 

F is a more fluent line, the result of the avoidance of the harsh 
consonants of ynghtful and eek. 

G 331 For hate, or for lelous imagining. 
F 355 Eight after hir imaginacioun. 

F is more sonorous as well as more flueut. 

G 390 [But] axeth mercy with a soi^eful herte, 
F 404 But asketh mercy with a dredful herte. 

Dredful makes a smoother line. 

G 399 And forlthered | your lawe with his making. 
F 413 , And for [thred wel | your lawe in his making. 

The use of the secondary accent on forthered to bear the stress 
is here harsh, especially as making is similarly stressed. F is 
consequently a smoother line. 



II. CHANGES FOR IMPROVEMENT IN GRAMMATICAL 

STRUCTURE. 

G 12-15 t Men shal nat wenen every-thing a lye 
For that he seigh it nat of yore ago. 
God wot, a thing is never the lesse so 
t Though every wight ne may hit nat y-see. 

F 12-15 t Men shal nat wenen every-thing a lye 
But-if him-self hit seeth, or elles doth 
For, god wot, thing is never the lasse sooth, 
t Thogh every wight ne may hit nat y-see. 

The introduction of /or in F 14, compensated for by the omission 
of the article, binds the four lines together and makes clear the 
causal relation which is only implied in G. This change is pre- 
pared for by the change of /or that in G 13 to But-if, a change 
which is itself an improvement in structure. 

t Indicates lijies common to both versions. 



84 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

G 17-21 t Than mote we to bokes that we finde, 

t Through which that olde thinges been in minde, 
t And to the doctrine of these olde wyse, 
t Yeven credence, in every skilful wyse, 
And trowen on these olde aproved stories. 

F 19-22 t ^nd to the doctrine of these olde wyse, 
t Yeve credence, in every skilful wyse. 
That tellen of these olde appreved stories. 

The structure of F is improved by shifting of line 22 from a 
parallel to yeven credence to an adjectival relation to olde wyse. 
Moreover, we have in G in line 20 somewhat of " giving credence '* 
to old doctrines, in 21, of '' believing in ^' old stories, and in 27, 
of " believing on '^ old books. This unnecessary tautology is 
relieved in F by changing the second " believe in '^ to " tell of." 

G 40 Now have I thereto this condicioun 
t That, of alle the floures .... 

F 40 Now have I than swich a condicioun 
t That, of alle the floures .... 

The swich of F looks forward to its correlative that and makes 
a somewhat closer connection in thought than exists in G. Bilder- 
beck ^ notes also the elimination of the repetition of th in therto this. 

G 89-94 Whan passed was almost the month of May, 
And I had romed, al the someres day. 
The grene medew, of which that I yow tolde. 
Upon the fresshe daysy to beholde 
And that the sonne out of the south gan weste, 
And closed was the flour and goon to reste 

F 197-198 Whan that the sonne out of the south gan weste, 

And that this flour gan close and goon to reste 



In G the connection between the and that of line 93 and its 
preceding time word whan of line 89 is very loose. In F line 
197 begins a new paragraph and is immediately followed by and 
that making the structure firm and close. 

G 107-108 ^Fair was this medew, as thoughte me overal, 
With floures swote enbrowded was it al. 

F 118-119 *Upon the smale softe swote gras. 

That was with floures swote enbrouded al. 

1 Bilderbeck, p. 80. 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women, 85 

F applies the description to the grass rather than to the meadow 
and makes the construction hypotactic. 

G 113-115 t Forgeten had the erthe his pore estat 

t Of winter, that him naked made and mat, 
And with his swerd of cold so sore had greved. 

F 115 And with his swerd of cold so sore greved. 

The change from the past perfect had greved of G to the past 
greved of F is a gain because it makes the line consistent in tense 
with the preceding made, to which it is parallel. In G the follow- 
ing line also contains a past perfect, and there is consequently an 
unpleasant heaping up of had tenses. 

G 150-152 For al the world, right as the dayesye 
t I-coroned is with whyte leves lyte, 
Smch were the /owes of hir coroun whyte. 

F 220 So were the florouns of hir coroun whyte. 

So is the more logical connective here, for swich inevitably has 
some adjectival meaning, whereas so is here purely adverbial. 

G 245-248 t ' For thou, ' quod he, ' art ther-to nothing able, 
* ' My servaunts been alle wyse and honourable, 
Thou art my mortal fo, and me warreyest, 

F 320-322 t ' For thou,' quod he, ' art ther-to nothing able. 
Hit is my relik, digne and delytable. 
And thou my fo, and al my folk werreyest, 

In G lines 246, 247, and 248 are all disconnected, and the 
transitions are abrupt. The substitution of F 321 for G 247 and 
the change in G 248 bind the three lines closely together by the 
force of a striking antithesis, besides giving the second and third 
a close grammatical relation. My folk werreyest in F is closer to 
the sense of the following common passage in which Chaucer is 
explicitly said to hinder love's followers. 

G 337 Who-so that goth, alwey she moot [nat] wante. 
F 361 Who-so that goth, algate she wol nat wante. 

In F, algate = nevertheless, makes a firmer construction and 
consequently a less awkward line. 



86 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

G 402-403 But wel I wot, with that he can endyte, 
He hath maked lewed folk delyte. . . . 

F 414-415 Al he hit that he can nat wel endyte 

Yet hath he maked lewed folk delyte. . . . 

In F the structure has been improved by the use of a correla- 
tive, with a consequent gain in directness and effectiveness of 
expression. 

III. CHANGES FOE IMPROVEMENT IN SENSE. 

G 10 But goddes forbode, but men shulde leva. 
F 10 But godforbede but men shulde leve. 

Here the expression goddes forbode, the sense of which is 
equivalent to that of the full form, over goddes forbode, has been 
given up for the clearer and more effective god forbede, i. e., God 
forbid ! At the same time the use of the verbal form has broken 
into a succession of u and o-sounds with just the vowel needed to 
improve the tone-color of the line. 

G 13 For that he seigh it nat of yore ago ; 
F 13 But-if himself hit seeth or elles doth ; 

The sense is better in F. The introduction of the intensive, 

himself, is a gain, and the expression, or elles doth, instead of being 

superfluous as Koppel strangely asserts,^ really adds a new and 

specific touch to the line. Legouis ^ regards G as " plus gauches,'^ 

and Kunz ^ considers F " etwas ausgefuhrter und kraftiger 

gegeben.^' 

G 36 Or elles in the loly tjme of May ; 
F 36 Save, certeynly, whan that the month of May. 
Is comen 

F has greater definiteness, fixing the time as the first day of 
May. Save certeynly as Legouis points out * puts in relief the first 
mention of the May, the leit motif of the Prologue. 

1 Koppel, Col. 52. 

^ Legouis, p. 66. 

^Kunz, " Verhaeltnis der Hss. von Chaucer's Legend of Good Women," p. 9. 

* Legouis, p. 67. 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 87 

G 51-52 And whan the sonne ginneth for to weste, 

Than closeth hit, and draweth hit to reste, — 

F 60-62 And whan that hit is eve, I renne bljrve, 
As sone as ever the sonne ginneth weste, 
To seen this flour, liow it wol go to reste. 

What is in G a merely incidental description of the daisy^s going 
to rest, is in F wrought into the structure of the poem, and is 
connected with the personality of the poet. Ginneth weste is an 
effective condensation oi ginneth for to weste, which makes possible 
in the first part of the line the use of as sone as ever instead of the 
rather colorless and whan. 

G 61 For wel I wot, thsX folk han her-beforn. 
F 74 For wel I wot, that ye han her-biforn. 

The introduction in a preceding passage in F of a direct appeal 
to lover poets for help in this poem makes the second person pos- 
sible here. The gain in liveliness is obvious. 

G 89 Whan passed was almost the month of May. 
F 108 And this was now the firste morwe of May. 

In G we have an abrupt and formal statement of the date, 
marking the beginning of the narrative part of the poem. In F 
the line besides being made more specific is subordinated to the 
account of the poet's early-morning devotion to the daisy, and 
becomes a mere parenthesis. The two passages have only to be 
read to make it clear that F is decidedly better. 

G 92 Upon the fresshe daysy to beholde, 
F 182 But for to loke upon the dayesye. 

Daysy in G becomes dayesye in F in order to prepare for the 
etymology, eye of day, which is peculiar to F, and the line is recast 
in order to bring the word into a more emphatic position at the 
end of the verse. 

G 104 Me mette how I was in the medew the, 
F 210 Me mette how I lay in the medew tho, 

F is more specific. 

G 126-130 t This was hir song — * the fouler we defye 1 ' 

Somme songen [layes] on the braunches clere 
Of love and [May], that loye hit was to here, 
In worship and in preysing of hir make, 
And of the newe blisful someres sake. 



88 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

F 138-144 t This was hir song — ' the fouler we defye, 

And al his craft I ' And somme songen clere 
Layes of love, that loye hit was to here, 
In worshipinge and preisinge of hir make. 
And /or the newe blisful somers sake 
.... they turned hem . . . 
t And songen . . . 

G is corrupt and apparently incomplete, yet, as it was written, 
it was inferior to F, which shows decided improvements in sense. 
In F 139 and al his craft is a valuable addition. Clere belongs 
with songen and not with braunches as in G, where its adverbial 
relation is obscured, and the branches are mentioned later in F in 
a more appropriate sense. G 130 seems to be an illogical combi- 
nation of the two expressions of the somer and for the somer^s sake. 
This is remedied in F where the line looks forward to a new 
context. 

G 145-146 And saw him come, and in his hond a quene, 
Clothed in ryal abite al of grene. 

F 213-214 The god of love, and in his hande a quene ; 
And she was clad in real habit grene. 

F 214 specializes the queen at once and better prepares for the 
following description of her. Al ofy the only insignificant words 
in G, are given up. 

G 149 With many floures, and I shal nat lye ; 
F 217 With, florouns smale, and I shal nat lye ; 

Florouns ^ smale is a more specific description than many floures. 

G 150 For al the world right as the dayesye 

I-coroned is ... . 
F 218 For al the world right as a dayesye 

Y-corouned is ... . 

As the comparison here is purely literal, and the daisy has in F 
already some allegorical significance, the indefinite article is more 
appropriate. 

^ If , as seems likely, the word florouns is a borrowing from Froissart's Dittie 

(cf. Lowes, p. 631-4), it by no means follows that F is the original line. Chaucer 

knew French and might at any time adopt a French word that suited his purpose. 

But why should he give up the sonorous and descriptive florouns smale for many 

floures f 



Chaucer^ Legend of Good Women. 89 

G 166-168 But at the last in hand I saw him holde 
t Two fyry dartes, as the gledes rede ; 
And aungellich his winges gan he sprede. 

F 234-236 And in his hande methoughte 1 saugh him holde 
t Two fyry dartes, as the gledes rede ; 
And aungellyke his winges saugh /sprede. 

The delayed perception of what the god of Love had in his 
hand comes in somewhat oddly after a detailed account of the 
embroidery of his gow^n and the garland on his head. This is 
improved in F. Another improvement is the change to saugh I 
in F 236, w^iich continues the point of view of vision established 
by line G, 166. 

G 221 3fak of your trouthe in love no host ne soun, 
F 267 Maketh of your trouthe neyther host ne soun. 

MahetJi is an improvement in sense, for being plural it carries 
out the alle y-fere of F 263, whereas mah can apply gramatically 
only to Ysiphile. The occurrence of the phrase trouthe in love in 
G 214 above and the mention of love as the subject of the ballad 
in G 212 and 215 are perhaps sufficient justification of its omission 

here. 

G 222 Nor Ypermistre or Adriane, ne pleyne ; 
F 268 Nor Ypermistre or Adriane, ye tweyne ; 

Ne pleyne seems inappropriate ^ here. The women are not 
represented as complaining of their fate but as glorying in their 
fidelity. Hence the propriety of replacing the expression even by 
the meaningless ye tweyne. The ending of the verse is little more 
than a tag in both cases. 

G 226-227 f They setten hem .... 

By ordre alle in compas, alle enveroun. 
F 300 And with that word a-compas enviroun, 

They setten hem 

And with that word is inserted primarily as a transition from the 
preceding passage peculiar to F. By ordre alle may be very well 
given up on other grounds, however, since the sitting in order is 
more fully explained later on. 

1 Cf. Bilderbeck, p. 79. 



90 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

.... ' What dostow heer 
G 242 In my 'presence, and that so boldely ? ' 

.... ' What dostow heer 
F 316 So nigh myn owne flour, so boldely.' 

There is decided improvement in sense here in that interest at 
once centers in the flower instead of in the god of Love. It is to 
be noted that in general the god occupies a more prominent place 
in G than in F. Changes consistent with this difference in the 
versions have been made in G 244, 248, and 253. 

G 313 By seint | Venus | of whom that I was bom. 
F 338 By selynt Venus that my moder is. 

Of ichom that I icas born is a heavy round-about expression 
which has been well replaced by the more compact thai my 
moder is. 

G 320 Ageyns these points ^ that ye han to him meved. 

F 344 Agayns al this that ye han to him meved. 

Al this is less formal and, in the mouth of Alcestis, more appro- 
priate than the these points of G. 

G 330 That tabouren in your eres many a thing. 
F 354 That tabouren in your eres many a soun. 

SouUy besides being more specific than thing, carries out the 
figure in tabouren. 

G 351-352 fAs thogh that he of malice wolde endyten 
Despyt of love, and hadde him-self y-wroght. 

F 371-372 fAs thogh that he of malice wolde endyten 

Despyt of love, and hadde him-self hit wroght. 

The sense of G is obscure and difficult, because an object for 

hadde y-wroght must be supplied. F is made clear by the insertion 

of hit. 

G 387 To dampne a man withoute answere or word. 
F 401 To dampne a man withoute answere of word. 

Answere or word is illogical. The sense is improved in F by 
the change to answere of word, 

^ Was the choice of the word in G influenced by the Lay de Franchise, 11. 222-3, 

Et quant li Eoys ces doulz mos escouta 
Touz ces .in. poins a dit qu'il retendra? 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 91 

G 412 And for to speke of other besinesse, 
F 424 And for to speke of other holynesse, 

The reason for this change viewed from the standpoint of either 
version is not obvious. The more religious character of the works 
which are named after this line has been noticed, and Legouis 
suggests ^ that holynesse was used in order to be consistent wdth the 
mention of Boece, which could not be easily dropped out. It must 
be remembered, however, that the phrase other holynesse looks 
backward as w^ell as forward, and the term holynesse applies equally 
to all the works named. It is more probable that we have here 
simply another change to the more specific and picturesque term. 
The poet is represented as on trial before an angry god, and his 
advocate is reciting his virtuous acts in his behalf. The works 
which she first names were written, she tells the god, 

'* To serve you, in preysing of your name," 

and in F the fiction of piety is kept up by calling the poems 
holynesse instead of keeping the colorless term besiness. 

G 440 And al foryeve, with-outen lenger space ; 
F 450 / al foryeve, with-outen lenger space ; 

The offense of the poet has been committed against the god of 
Love, not against Alcestis, who intercedes in his behalf. His 
forgiveness, tlierefore, should come from the god of Love, and the 
change, slight as it is, was probably not accidental, but was made 
as an improvement in sense. ^ 

G 471-472 fThou shalt, whyl that thou livest, yeer by yeer. 
The moste party of thy lyve spende 

F 481-482 jThou shalt, whyl that thou livest, yeer by yeer, 
The moste party of thy tyme spende 

The change from lyve to tyme is an improvement in sense. Whyl 

^Legouis, p. 68. 

^ Lowes (p. 671, n. 4) regards this change as a '' rude blow" to the theory that 
Alcestis is Queen Anne. This is pushing both the literal meaning and the alle- 
gory entirely too far. The avowed purpose of Alcestis was to reconcile her lord 
to the poet (cf. lines 419 ff. ), and her responsibility for the reconciliation is fully 
recognized in both versions. Though the god may easily depute to Alcestis the 
assignment of penance, forgiveness belongs, in the nature of things, to himself alone. 



92 The Problem of the Tim Prologues to 

that thou livest is sufficient intimation that the task is to be life-long. 
Lyve in the next line is needless repetition, which is obviated by 
the change to tymej making better sense and more fluent verse. 

.... Kalender is she 
G 543-544 Of goodnesse, for she taughte of fyn lovinge, 
fAnd namely of wyfhood the livinge. 

F 544-545 For she taught al the craft of fyn lovinge. 
fAnd namely of wyfhood the livinge. 

The sense is somewhat clearer and simpler in F. G paraphrased 
means, ' for she taught the living of fine loving and especially of 
wifehood/ whereas in F the sense is, ^ for she taught the craft (or 
art) of fyn loving and the living of wifehood.' 



IV. CHANGES FOR CONSISTENCY. 

1. Changes which conform to the allegorical purpose of F. 

A general comparison of the two versions (Chapter iii) has 
seemed to justify the conclusion that F is marked by an allegorical 
purpose which is wanting in G. This conclusion is borne out by 
various minor changes, which are to be satisfactorily accounted for 
only on the ground that they were made for the sake of consistency 
with that purpose. Such changes are the following : 

G 48 To seen these floures agein the sonne sprede. 
F 48 To seen this flour agein the sonne sprede. 

The change to the singular is not only a gain in definiteness, 
but a first hint of the personification of the daisy in F. 

G 53 So sone hit is afered of the night, 

F 63 For fere of night so hateth she derknesse. 

The tendency toward personification in F here becomes clear. 
It is a part of the enlivening which the whole passage has received 
from revision. 

G 57-58 fAnd ever y-lyke fair and fresh of hewe, 
As wel in winter as in somer newe, 

F 55-56 t^nd ever y-lyke fair, and fresh of hewe, 
And I love hit, and ever y-lyke newe, 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 93 

The propriety of the mention of winter in G 58 has ah'eady 
been fully shown by Lowes. ^ It is given up here, not as has been 
surmised, because it is inconsistent with fact or literary convention, 
but because an avowal of constant love for the daisy is more im- 
portant for the new purpose than a bit of description which is 
susceptible of literal interpretation only. 

G 61 For wel I wot that folk han her-beforn 
F 73 For wel I wot that ye han her-biforn 

The direct appeal in F to " lovers that can make of sentement " 
for help " in this cas '^ enlivens the following lines by throwing 
them all into the second person. We may pass over the substitu- 
tion of ye for they in G 65 and 67 and proceed to a comparison of 
the concluding lines of the passage. 

G 68-80 I hope that they wil nat ben evel apayed 
Sith hit is seid in forthering and honour 
Of hem that either serven leef or flour. 

F 80-2 For-bereth me, and beth nat evel apayed 
Sin that ye see I do hit in the honour 
Of love, and eek in service of the flour, 
*Whom that I serve 

These lines indicate distinctly the difference in purpose between 
the two versions. One is simply a "flower and leaf poem glori- 
fying wifely fidelity with Alcestis as its crowning type ; the other 
is written in the service of a flower, which is fervently invoked in 
terms of personification. The whole succession of changes con- 
tributes to the allegory. 

G 158-62 fY-clo^ed was this mighty god of love 
Of silk, y-brouded ful of grene greves ; 
A garlond on his head of rose-leves 
*Steked al with lilie floures newe. 

F 227-30 In silk, enbrouded ful of grene greves 
In-with a fret of rede rose-leves 
*The fresshest sin the world was first bigonne 
*His gilte heer was corouned with a sonne, 

In F the rose-leves are transferred from the garland on the 
god's head to the embroidery of his robe. A crown of gold is 

^ Lowes, p. 617, n. 1. 



94 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

now his due as a sign of royalty, but on account of his ethereal 
origin he wears a sun instead, ^^ for hevinesse and wighte/' That 
the change has been made to accommodate the description to an 
allegorical interpretation in which the god of Love becomes the 
king of England is possibly a fair inference. This is noted by 
Koch/ approved by Bilderbeck/ and rejected by Lowes.^ Legouis'* 
suggests, and not unreasonably, that the sun is more consistent 
with the following allusion to brightness. The objection of Lowes 
based upon the heat of the sun is meaningless, for it is " a sun " 
that is here mentioned and allusion is poetical. 

G 179 Hir name was Alceste, the debonayre ; 

F 275-276 *So passeth al my lady sovereyne, 

That is so good, so fair, so debonaire ; 

The suppression of the name of Alcestis in the ballad makes a 
change here necessary. It is to be noticed that the epithet debonaire 
is now applied, not to Alcestis but to my ladye sovereyne. 

G 234 I, lening faste by under a bente. 

F 308 I kneling by this flour, in good entente 

In G the poet is merely the conventional spectator, who remains 
half-concealed to watch the company and ^^ knowen what this 
peple mente,'' and who is surprised in the act.^ In F he is a 
worshipper of the daisy, and is discovered kneeling devoutly beside 
the flower. This greater devotion is characteristic of F. 

G 242 In my presence, and that so boldely. 
F 316 So nigh myn owne flour, so boldely. 

In F the flower ststnds for the Queen, into whose royal presence 
the poet has ventured. In G no such allegorical meaning attaches 
to it, and the god of Love rebukes the intruder for being in his 
presence. 

G 355 That usen wilfulhed and tirannye. 
F 375 That han no reward but at tirannye. 

The sweeping expression of F, that care for nothing but tyranny, 

^ Englische Studien, xxx, 457. ^Bilderbeck, p. 86. 

3 Lowes, p. 675, n. 1. *Legouis, p. 68. 

^Cf. Paradysd' Amours, 11. 60-1, 228-36. 



Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. 95 

would be less likely to give offense to a royal patron than the 
more tempered expression, that practise wilfulness and tyranny, 
which might be construed to apply to a headstrong king of Eng- 
land. This is only a part of a general toning down noted by 
Skeat.' 

2. Changes which confo7'm to other changes. 

G 51 And whan the sonne ginneth for to weste, 
F 61 As sone as ever the sonne ginneth weste, 

This change, an improvement in itself, is needed to conform to 

the introduction in F of several new lines the last of which, F 

60, is 

And whan that hit is eve, I renne blyve, 

After this line the and whan of G must be given up. If the 
change had proceeded in the other direction and the lines peculiar 
to F had been dropped out, no alteration of F 61 would have been 
necessary or even desirable. 

G 55 This dayesye, of alle floures flour, 



59 Fain wolde I preisen. 

F 52-53 ... to doon al maner reverence 
As she, that is of alle floures flour, 



The introduction in F of three lines, 50-52, of enthusiastic 

devotion to the daisy is responsible for the change in G 55, which 

is made to continue the sense and the spirit of the passage. The 

change is away from conventionality to vigor and liveliness of 

expression.^ 

G 71-72 For trusteth wel, I ne have nat undertake 

As of the leef, ageyn the flour, to make ; 

F 186-189 *I pray to god that faire mot she falle, 

*And alle that loven floures, for hir sake ! 
But natheles, ne wene nat that I make 
In preysing of the flour agayn the leef. 

* Oxford Chaucer, ni, xxv ; Bilderbeck, 95 ff. 

^The "utter shipwreck. of grammar" noted by Lowes (p. 660) is after all 
rather an innocent slip. For a similar anacoluthon cf. Canterbury Tales, A 4083, 

Unthank come on his hand that bond him so 
And he that bettre sholde han knit the reyne. 



96 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

Tlje almost complete change of G 71 to F 188 is due to the 
fact that the passage introduced in G by line 71 has been trans- 
posed to a new context in F, where it follows an impassioned invo- 
cation of the daisy. This makes the adversative sense of hut 
natheles appropriate. 

G 81-84 tBut wherfor that I spak, to yeve credence 
To bokes olde and doon hem reverence, 
Is for men shulde autoritees beleve, 
Ther as ther lyth non other assay by preve. 

F 98-101 To olde stories, and doon hem reverence, 
And that men mosten more thing beleve 
Then men may seen at eye or elles preve f 
*That shal I seyn, whan that I see my tyme, 

The changes in G 83 and 84, which alter the whole trend of 
the passage making it interrogative, are made for the sake of con- 
sistency with the postponement which follows in F 101, and are 
part of a larger improvement already discussed. 

G 108-110 With floures swote enbrowded was it al ; 
As for to speke of gomme, or erbe, or tree 
fComparisoun may noon y-maked be ; 

F 120-122 *0f swich swetnesse and swich odour overal, 

That, for to speke of gomme, or herbe, or tree, 
fComparisoun may noon y-maked be ; 

The change of G 109, as for to speJce to that, for to speke is made 
possible by the use of swich in the preceding line peculiar to F. 
The result is a clearer and firmer construction. 

G 144-145 The gan I loken endelong the mede, 

And saw him come, and in his bond a queue, 

F 212-213 And from a-fer com walking in the mede 

The god of love, and in his hands a quene ; 

These lines in G immediately follow the exclamation of the 
lark, which is omitted in F. The omission of this awkward 
device leads to the use of the more direct lines in F and the im- 
mediate appearance of the real subject, the Queen. 

G 224 Whan that this balade al y-songen was. 
F 270 This balade may ful wel y-songen be. 

The changed purpose of the ballad and the introduction of five 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 97* 

new lines of praise for "my lady free," have necessitated a com- 
plete change in G 224. 

G 238 And seyde, 'who resteth ther? ' and I answerede 
F 312 And seyde, * who kneleth ther ? ' and I answerede 

This change is made for the sake of consistency with F 308. 

G 266-268 ^Hast thou nat mad m English eek the book 
How that Crisseyde Troilus forsook, 
In shewinge how that wemen han don mis ? 

F 332-333 And of Criseyde thou hast seyd as thee liste 
That maketh men to wommen lasse triste, 

The omission of the "old age passage/' G 258-264, has deprived 
lines G 266—268 of their context and made it necessary to recast 
these lines in F. 

G 288 For to hir love were they so trewe, 

F 334 That ben as trewe as ever was any steel. 

These lines are not exactly parallel. The variation is due to the 
omission of lines G 267-312. The substance of those lines, which 
recount instances of fidelity, is tersely expressed in the single line 

of F. 

G 315 As other oldefoles many a day, 

F 337 As other wrecches han doon many a day. 

The omission of the allusion to olde foles in G 262 may be 
responsible for the change of G 315. Both changes were probably 
due to a desire to tone down the somewhat blunt character of this 
part of the Prologue. 

G 370 And for to kepe his lordes hir degree, 
F 384 Al wol he kepe his lordes hir degree, 

G 370 follows a couplet which alludes to a king's oath of office, 
and which is wanting in F. The omission of it makes necessary 
a change in F 384, which becomes the first line of a new sentence. 

G 532-533 *For of Alceste shulde thy wryting be 
Sin that thou wost that kalender is she 

F 541-540 *Sin that thou art so gretly in her dette 
And wost so weZ, that kalender is she 



^8 The Problem of the Two Prologues to 

G 533 has been changed to adapt it to the new context which 
it has in F. 



V. CHANGES INCIDENTAL TO THE REVISION AND NOT 
SIGNIFICANT AS TO ITS DIRECTION. 

A number of minor variations between the two versions have 
found no place in the classification thus far, many, because they 
are so slight as to seem almost accidental, and others, because no 
argument as to the priority of either form can safely be based upon 
them. For the sake of completeness these changes are here set 
down in the order of their occurrence in the G Prologue. 

G 29 And as for me, though that my wit he lyte. 
F 29 And as for me, thogh that I can hut lyte. 

G 77 I not who serveth leef , ne who the flour. 
F 193 Ne I not who serveth leef, ne who the flour. 

G 78 That nis nothing the entente of my labour. 
F 194 Wei hrouken they hir service or labour. 

G 131 That songen, * blissed be seynt Valentyn ! ' 
F 145 And songen, ' blessed be seynt Valentyn ! ' 

G 132 [For] at his day I chees yow to be myn, 
F 146 For on his day I chees yow to be myn, 

G 135-136 And after diden other observaunces, 

Right [plesing] un-to love and to nature ; 

F 150-151 To love, and diden hir other observaunces, 
That longeth un-to love and to nature ; 

G 153 For of o perle/yw and oriental 
F 221 For of o perle/z/ne, oriental 

G 157 Considered eek the fret of gold above. 
F 225 Considered eek hir fret of gold above. 

G 170 Al-gate me thoughe he mighte wel y-see ; 
F 238 Al-gate me thoughte that he mighte see 

G 180 I prey to god that ever falle she fayre ! 
F 277 I prey to god that ever falle hir faire ! 

G 214 Hyde ye your trouthe in love and your renoun ; 
F 260 Hyde ye your trouthe of love and your renoun ; 

G 215 And thou, Tisbe, that hast /or love swich peyne. 
F 261 And thou, Tisbe, that hast of love swich peyne. 



Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 99 

G 217 Herro, Dido, Landomia, alle in-fere, 

F 263 Herro, Dido, Landomia, alle y-fere, 

G 218 Eek Phyllis, hanging for thy Demophoun, 
F 264 And Phyllis, hanging for thy Demophoun, 

G 231 As they were of degree, ful curteisly ; 

F 305 As they were of estaat, ful curteisly ; 

G 237 The god of love on me his eye caste, 

F 311 This god of love on me his eyen caste, 

G 239 Un-to his axing, whan that I him herde, 

F 313 Unto his asking, what that I hit herde, 

G 251 And lettest folk to han devocioun 

F 325 And lettest folk from Mr devocioun 

G 253 To troste on me. Thou mayst hit nat denye ; 

F 327 To serve Love. Thou mayst hit nat denye ; 

G 254 For in pleyn text, hit nedeth nat to glose, 

F 328 For in pleyn text, withouten nede of glose, 

G 314 Although [that'] thou reneyed hast my lay, 

F 336 For, thogh that thou reneyed hast my lay, 

G 338 This man to yow may wrongly been accused, 

F 350 This man to yow may falsly been accused, 

G 340 Or elles, sir, for that this man is nyce 

F 362 And eek, paraunter, for this man is nyce 

G 341 He may translate a thing in no malyce, 

F 363 He mighte doon hit, gessing no malyce, 

G 342 But for he useth bokes for to make, 

F 364 But for he useth thinges for to make 

G 375 Al be that here stat be nat a-liche, 

F 389 Al be that Mr estat be nat y-liche, 

G 439 Al lyth in yow, doth with him what yow leste 

F 449 Al lyth in yow, doth with him as yow leste 

G 451 That han me holpen, and put in smch degree, 

F 461 That han me holpe and put in this degree, 

G 467 In right ne wrong ; and leme this at me ! 

F 477 In right ne wrong ; and lerne that of me ! 

G 479 For in your world that is now holden game. 

F 489 For in your world that is now holde a game. 

G 480 And thogh thee lesteth nat a lover be. 

F 490 And thogh thee lyke nat a lover be. 

v.. cyf C. : 



100 Chaucer^ s Legend of Good Women. 

y. Conclusion. 

If my inferences from the evidence presented in the preceding 
chapters have been just, the cumulation of proof makes certain 
conckisions appear inevitable. In the first place, it is clear that 
the version which I have called G, the text of Ms. Gg. 4, 27, is 
an earlier draft of the Prologue, and that F, the commonly accepted 
text, is the later. This has been proved, not, perhaps, for all 
time nor beyond all question, but with as high a degree of certainty 
as can reasonably be expected in the solution of such a problem. 
The first impressions of Furnivall, Kunz, Skeat, and others have 
been fully confirmed. The arguments of ten Brink and Lowes, 
which make against the traditional opinion, have been examined in 
detail, and have been found to be not only inadequate in themselves 
but also overwhelmingly contradicted by evidence on the other side. 

It has been shown, in the second place, that the later version is 
an adaptation of the earlier to meet the demands of a new purpose. 
This purpose is the celebration, under the figure of the daisy, and 
through the daisy, of Alcestis, of the virtues of the queen of Eng- 
land, to whom the later version is dedicated. The assumption 
that such a purpose existed is not only justified by the language of 
the F- version, but is demanded by many of the changes, which are 
inexplicable without it. 

These two conclusions, constituting in themselves the end which 
was to be attained by this investigation, are not inter-dependent. 
If the allegorical interpretation of F should be denied, or extended 
to G also, the evidence in favor of F as a revision would remain 
intact. Data for determining the time or the occasion of the revi- 
sion are not available, and the question of date is, moreover, not 
pertinent to this discussion. There is, however, no evidence to 
indicate that the two versions are separated by any considerable 
lapse of time. 

This study of the relation of the two Prologues to each other was 
suggested by a general discussion of the problem in the English 
Seminary of the Johns Hopkins University. My thanks are due 
to Mr. Jas. E. Routh, Mr. B. A. Wise, and other members of the 
seminary for helpful notes and suggestions placed at my disposal 
at the outset. 



LIFE. 



I was born in Warren County, Illinois, in the year 1875; 
attended the public schools of that county and of Baltimore ; and 
received the degree of A. B. from the Johns Hopkins University 
in 1899. The next year I spent at Harvard as a graduate student 
in English. In 1900 I returned to Johns Hopkins, entered the 
English seminaiy, was appointed Student Assistant in English, 
and reappointed in 1901 and 1902. I held a Hopkins Scholar- 
ship during my undergraduate course and was Fellow in English 
in 1903-1904. 

I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the authorities of 
the University, and my specific obligations to Professors Greene 
and Griffin, Associate Professors Armstrong and Ogden, and 
especially to Professor Bright, under whose direction this disserta- 
tion was written, for his inspiring example of sound scholarship, 
and his patient and penetrating criticism. 



x 190^ 



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